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HARRY’S 

NEWSPAPER 


. 






















* 

















D * 


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4 





















































































































































> 




ON THE EDGE OF COALVILLE 
















/ 

HARRY’S NEWSPAPER 

or 

The Young Publisher 



By 

Stephen AD. Cox 

Illustrations By 

Willard G.Smythe 

ALBERT*%WHITMAN 
& CO 

CHICAGO 




HARRY’S NEWSPAPER 
Copyright, 1930 
Albert Whitman & Co. 
Chicago, U. S. A. 



ADVENTURE BOOKS FOR 
BOYS AND GIRLS 

SKIMMER THE DARING 
BLUNDER’S MYSTERY COMPANIONS 
FIGHTING FOR CUBA 

ICEBOUND IN THE SOUTH POLAR SEAS 
NOVELTY CIRCUS 



Printed in the U. S. A. 

©CIA 31802 



DEC 2$ :33G 


FOREWORD 


The technical details of the printing 
business, found here and there in this 
story, might at first thought appear 
too abstruse for young people to read, 
or not sufficiently understandable by 
the majority. But the truth is that 
nowadays, in every country town, the 
high schools publish a school paper, and 
the boys and girls come to the printing 
offices, the girls with the copy that they 
have written for their department in the 
paper, and the boys to make up the 
forms. Sometimes the girls do likewise, 
and they learn quite a great deal about 
printing and the newspaper business. 
They talk it so much that the children 
in the different grades become impreg¬ 
nated by the printing and publishing 


aroma. 






This story of a young man who start¬ 
ed and ran a country newspaper, even 
though there is a good deal of technical 
explanation about the printing, will, I 
believe, be well received by the majority 
of the young people, and its technical 
details will not be considered too ob¬ 
scure nor too dry for them to read. 

STEPHEN A. D. COX. 


The prices quoted throughout the book may vary 
slightly from exact quotations of prices for similar out¬ 
lays at this current date. 


THE PUBLISHERS. 


This book is published as an inspira* 
tion to all ambitious American boys 
seeking to establish themselves 
in a business career 



/ 


CONTENTS 


Page 

I Thrown On His Own Resources - - - 15 

II Ready for Business.- - - 29 

III The Outlook Encouraging ----- 50 

IV Making Good Progress ------ 64 

V A Pleasant Sunday - -- -- -- 77 

VI Busy Days - -- -- -- -- - 89 

VII The Coalville News, Vol. I, No. I - - 111 
VIII The Mass Meeting ------- 136 

IX The Mine Disaster - - -- -- --152 
X Pleased and Encouraged ------ 169 

XI Fire ------------- 183 

XII At the End of a Year ------- 197 

























LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 


On the edge of Coalville - -- -- -- -- 4 

The Coalville News just off the press - - - - 14 

The old Army press - -- -- -- -- - 23 

Carried the table down the street ------ 43 

“Father told me to invite you to take dinner with us” - 83 

“Then look out for yourself, young man” - - - 107 

“The Coalville News is going to be a success” - - 179 















THE COALVILLE NEWS JUST OFF THE PRESS 


14 













HARRY’S NEWSPAPER 


or 

THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Chapter I 

THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 

Harry Weston was an orphan at 
eighteen years of age. He resided in the 
town of Dellwood, in southeastern Colo¬ 
rado, about seventy miles from Denver. 
After paying his father’s funeral ex¬ 
penses with the money his father had 
left in the bank, he was penniless. He 
hardly knew what to do. He could not 
get work in any of the stores, as the 
merchants in the town had all the em¬ 
ployees they needed. He sat down and 
pondered. What should he do? If he 
went to Denver he might be able to get 
employment, and then again he might 
is 



16 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


not. While considering matters, an idea 
came to him. 

One year previously he had visited an 
invalid uncle in Allentown, and Harry 
had taken care of him till he died. This 
was over a period of six months, and 
during that time Harry had worked in 
a printing shop, as his uncle did not 
need constant attention; and he had 
learned much about the printing busi¬ 
ness. He could set type, make up forms 
and put them on the press. He even 
understood how to do plain commercial 
job printing and had printed quite a 
number of neat jobs on the job-press. 

Why not start a little paper some¬ 
where? he asked himself. He knew he 
could make a success of it. But having 
no money was a serious drawback. He 
was a youth of ability and resourceful¬ 
ness, however, and he felt sure he could 
overcome this difficulty. 







THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 17 


He had a sister, his only living rela¬ 
tive and a school-teacher, teaching at a 
point about twenty miles distant. He 
knew she had some money saved up, as 
she had told him so when she was at the 
funeral and had offered to let him have 
some to help defray the expenses if the 
money in the bank had not been suffi¬ 
cient. He could borrow some of her. 

He went at once to see his sister, who 
told him she would lend him all the 
money she could spare, viz., one hun¬ 
dred dollars, but she doubted its being 
enough for his purpose. He said he 
could make it do, and that he would 
accept the loan and pay her the money 
back in due time, with interest at the 
rate of six per cent. She agreed to this, 
and handed him the one hundred dol¬ 
lars, taking his note for the amount. He 
thanked her, bade her good-bye and 
went back to Dellwood. 



18 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Next day he went to a firm in Denver 
that sold printing machinery, type and 
all kinds of printing material. Introduc¬ 
ing himself to the manager, he asked 
if he would sell him a little printing out¬ 
fit suitable for printing a small-sized 
paper, letting him pay a small sum 
down and the rest in six months or a 
year. 

The manager of the firm looked at 
the youth interestedly and asked where 
he expected to start his paper. 

“At Coalville,” replied Harry. “That’s 
a little coal-mining town of about four¬ 
teen hundred population about seventy- 
five miles from here. I was there once, 
and liked the looks of the town. It has 
no paper and I think that I may be able 
to do pretty well there.” 

The manager nodded and then asked: 
“How old are you?” 

“Eighteen.” 




THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 19 


“Are your parents living?” 

“No, sir. I’m an orphan. My mother 
died several years ago and my father 
died only a few days ago. I have a 
sister, a school-teacher, otherwise I am 
alone in the world.” 

The manager of the type foundry 
looked thoughtful. ‘What do you know 
about running a paper?” he asked. 
“Have you had any experience?” 

“I worked six months in an office in 
Allentown, and learned something 
about the newspaper business. I can 
set type, make up forms and do most 
any work that would need to be done 
in a small office such as the one I am 
hoping to start.” 

The manager pondered a few minutes 
and then said: “It would be unusual for 
us to sell a minor an outfit, and chiefly 
on credit, but still as you look like a 




20 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


bright, honest young man, we might 
sell you a small equipment, you paying 
twenty per cent cash and we taking 
mortgage notes for the balance, you to 
take up one of these notes each month, 
with six per cent interest added. How 
would that do?” 

“That would be splendid, sir,” said 
Harry, his face lighting up. “Only—I 
have only one hundred dollars, and that 
would buy such a small outfit, even if I 
only pay twenty per cent cash, that per¬ 
haps you would not care to bother with 
it.” 

The manager smiled. “That makes 
the deal all the more logical,” he said, 
“as when we take a risk like this, we are 
glad it is not a large one. What size 
paper do you plan to start in this little 
mining town you mentioned? It won’t 
need to be very large, as there won’t be 
such a great amount of news to print.” 






THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 21 


“A seven-column folio paper ought to 
be big enough/’ agreed Harry. “And I 
expect to have one side of it already 
printed, with foreign news on that side 
—‘ready print’, as such papers are 
called—and I will print the local news 
on the other side.” 

The manager nodded. “That might 
do,” he said. “You may be able to print 
a very good little paper, seeing that you 
can print it on an army hand press, and 
such a press we can sell you cheaply— 
only eighty-five dollars. We have a lot 
of second-hand body and job and adver¬ 
tising type we can let you have cheaply 
also, and such other material as you will 
need. We will sell you the complete out¬ 
fit to the amount of two hundred dol¬ 
lars, and you can pay us forty-four 
dollars cash. The rest we will divide up 
into twelve mortgage notes of thirteen 
dollars each, payable one each month, 





22 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


with six per cent added. That will be 
satisfactory, will it?” 

“Oh, yes indeed, sir.” 

“Very well.” 

The manager of the type-foundry 
liked the looks of this youth who had 
such sound business qualities. He went 
with him through the salesroom and 
showed him the press and other ma¬ 
terial, and annotated what Harry se¬ 
lected for purchase. The press was of 
interest to the youth, as they had a 
cylinder press in the office where he had 
worked, while this army press looked 
scarcely too heavy to be tucked under 
the arm of a strong man to be carried 
in that manner. It consisted simply of 
an iron bed for the type-form to rest on, 
while by turning a crank at one side, the 
bed and form were moved from one end 
of the iron frame to the other, passing 
at the same time underneath an iron 




« 






\ 




THE OLD ARMY PRESS 


























23 















24 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


cylinder about five inches in diameter, 
this making sufficient pressure on the 
paper placed on the type and held in 
place by a thin metal flange around the 
edges, called a friskit, to print the paper 
very nicely. The type first had to be 
inked by hand, so an ink-roller was 
necessary, and this was added to the 
list of material for the outfit. 

Harry picked out the type he liked 
best, of the second-hand kind the man¬ 
ager had mentioned, of both body type, 
—the size used for the reading matter— 
and advertising and job type, the large¬ 
sized type. He bought a lot of leads and 
slugs also, and some wooden reglets 
—these being strips of maple one-eighth 
inch thick and half an inch wide, to be 
sawed up into different lengths that he 
might need at any time. He also pur¬ 
chased a ten-gallon can of ink for print¬ 
ing the paper, and some black and color 




THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 25 


inks in collapsible tubes for use in job¬ 
printing. A full-sized stand, to put the 
type-cases on, and with flanges under¬ 
neath, for the advertising and job-print¬ 
ing type-cases to rest on, was added to 
his purchases. Also an imposing stone 
for the forms to rest on, and a stand for 
the stone were included. A little job- 
press, 7x11 inches (inside chase mea¬ 
surements) was selected, twelve brass 
column rules, and other brass rules, 
short lengths, or “labor-saving” kind, 
as it is called. Some brass-bottomed 
galleys, a mallet, planer and a benzine 
can were added, and then he told the 
manager to figure up his bill. The man¬ 
ager did so, and it amounted to $198.50. 

“I would have liked to have bought a 
paper-cutter,” said Harry, “but I won’t 
have to cut much paper and can do it 
with an ordinary hand paper-cutting 
knife—like this one here in the cata- 





26 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


logue,” and pointed to a picture in the 
catalogue. 

“Yes, that will do very well,” said the 
manager, “and you can have the people 
at the paper house where you buy your 
paper cut it to the proper sizes, ready to 
print. Poster paper, cut 6x9 and 8x12 
inches will be the sizes you will need 
most, and all the cutting you will have 
to do will be on jobs that require paper 
of small size, such as receipts, and so 
forth.” 

Harry started and looked disconcert¬ 
ed. “Goodness!” he exclaimed. “I 
don’t know what I’ll do. I forgot that 
I will have to have job stock, and I 
won’t have money enough to pay for it, 
as I’m spending it all with you, except¬ 
ing enough to pay freight on the 
presses, type and other material. Do 
you suppose the paper house people will 
send me paper on credit?” 



THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES 27 


“The ‘ready print’ people will,” he 
said, “as they carry advertising on the 
side that they print and they want a 
big circulation so they can get bigger 
prices for the advertising. I judge the 
people that sell paper for the job-print¬ 
ing department will do likewise.” 

“Thanks for that information,” said 
Harry, and then he turned to finish the 
purchasing of the outfit. He told the 
manager to include the paper-knife and 
some border to put around advertise¬ 
ments, making the amount an even two 
hundred dollars. The manager did so, 
after which Harry paid him the forty- 
four dollars and signed the twelve 
mortgage-notes of thirteen dollars 
each,—and the transaction was com¬ 
pleted. 

“We’ll box up your outfit and ship it 
to-morrow,” said the manager. “I am 
glad you came to us and bought of our 




28 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


firm, Mr. Weston,” he continued, “and I 
most heartily hope you will make your 
paper a great success.” 

“Thanks, sir, and thanks for having 
sold me the outfit on such favorable 
terms,” said Harry, and took his de¬ 
parture. 

A visit to the firm that furnished 
papers to country publishers with one 
side of the paper already printed, and 
to the house that sold job stock, as 
paper is called that is used in job-print¬ 
ing, yielded good results, for each of 
these firms told him they would send 
him what paper he needed, and he could 
pay the first of each month. 

Having accomplished the business on 
which he had gone to Denver, Harry 
boarded the train and went to Coalville, 
which was to be the scene of his news¬ 
paper-publishing venture. 




Chapter II 
READY FOR BUSINESS 

Harry rented a room and engaged 
board at the home of one of the miners, 
and then went back downtown. He 
looked around till he found a room up¬ 
stairs over a grocery store, that would 
do for his printing-office. The grocery 
store proprietor, a German named Geb- 
hart, owned the building, and told the 
youthful prospective publisher that he 
might have the room for almost noth¬ 
ing, as it had stood empty several years 
and he didn’t know of anyone else who 
would probably be wanting to rent it; 
so Harry rented the room, paying the 
first month’s rent in advance. It cost 
three dollars, as the German said that 
would be sufficient, and he would take 
it out in printing after the paper was 
started—Harry had, of course, told him 

29 


30 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


he intended putting in a printing outfit 
and would start a newspaper. 

Harry had packed his trunk and suit¬ 
case before leaving Dellwood to go to 
Denver to purchase his printing outfit, 
and had instructed the people at whose 
home he had boarded while attending 
to the burial of his father, to send the 
trunk and suitcase by express, stating 
the date for them to be sent. They 
would be there even now, he felt sure, 
and on going around to the express 
office he found that he was right. Pay¬ 
ing the express charges, he hired a man 
to haul them to the place where he had 
engaged room and board, and he and 
the man carried them up to his room. 

The type foundry people of whom he 
had purchased his printing outfit in 
Denver were as good as their word. 
They must have shipped the printing 
press and material the next day after he 







READY FOR BUSINESS 


31 


purchased it, for it arrived on the third 
day, and was unloaded from the freight- 
car onto the railway station platform. 
It created considerable interest among 
the people at the station, even the sta¬ 
tion agent stopping a few moments to 
look at the printing paraphernalia. 

“Somebody is going to start a print¬ 
ing office here,” he said to one of the 
men standing around. “That will be 
good. The more industries we have 
represented, the better it is for the 
town.” 

“That’s the way to look at it,” the 
man replied. 

Harry followed him into his office, 
and asked how much the freight was on 
the printing material that had just been 
unloaded from the car. “I’m Harry 
Weston,” he added, “and it’s my prop¬ 
erty.” 

“Oh,” the agent said, looking at the 




32 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


youth with some surprise and no little 
interest. “So you are the person who 
is going to put in the printing office.” 

“Yes, sir; and I am going to do not 
only job printing, but am going to start 
a newspaper, too. I don’t know how it 
will do, but I hope the people here will 
like the idea of having a newspaper and 
will subscribe for it, the majority of 
them at any rate.” 

“Likely they will do so,” said the sta¬ 
tion agent, with a friendly look and 
intonation. “You can count on me as a 
subscriber, for one, when you get the 
paper started. My name is Garland, 
Henry Garland. The freight charges 
are fourteen dollars and seventy cents.” 

“I’ll make a note of your name and 
send you a copy of the first issue, and 
place your name in my subscription 
ledger as my first subscriber,” said 
Harry. “And thanks for subscribing. 





READY FOR BUSINESS 


33 


Here is the freight money,” and he 
placed a ten and a five-dollar bill on the 
window-ledge. 

“Rented a room yet, for your office?” 
asked Garland as he handed out thirty 
cents in change, and placed the bank¬ 
notes in the money-drawer. 

“Yes, upstairs over Mr. Gebhart’s 
grocery store.” 

“That ought to do first rate. It’s right 
in the heart of the business portion of 
our town.” 

“Yes, it’s a good location.” 

Then Harry went out onto the plat¬ 
form and found a drayman there, look¬ 
ing at the printing paraphernalia. 

“Who does this belong to?” he asked 
of one of the men standing around. “I’d 
like the job of moving it to wherever 
its owner wants it moved.” 

“It’s mine,” said Harry. “What will 
you charge to haul it to Gebhart’s gro- 


34 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


eery store and help get it upstairs into 
the room above?” 

The drayman eyed the printing ma¬ 
terial a few moments and then said: 

“Five dollars. Some of it’s pretty 
heavy, or I’d do it cheaper.” 

“That won’t be too much,” said 
Harry. “Let’s load it into the dray.” 

He and the man loaded the printing 
press and other printing material into 
the dray, and then Harry got up on the 
seat beside the man, and they were soon 
at the grocery store. 

It took an hour and a half to get the 
printing outfit upstairs and into the 
room Harry had rented, and then he 
paid the drayman, who departed. 

Harry took off his coat and hat and 
hung them on a nail in one corner of 
the room, and then, after a few mo¬ 
ments of thought, went downstairs and 
into the grocery store. 






READY FOR BUSINESS 


35 


“May I borrow a hatchet or hammer, 
Mr. Gebhart?” he asked of the pro¬ 
prietor. “I need one to uncrate my 
printing material.” 

The man handed him a hammer, and 
Harry thanked him and went back up¬ 
stairs. He went to work in real earnest 
and in an hour’s time had the printing 
outfit all uncrated. The wooden slats 
he stood on end in a closet at the back 
end of the room. 

The rack for the type-cases to rest on 
he placed near the front of the room, 
at one side, where he could get good 
light, so he could see to pick up the type 
when setting it, as the types are small, 
and good light is needed. The job- 
press he placed in the corner opposite, 
edging it into place gradually. The 
table for the imposing stone to rest on 
he placed at one side of the room, near 
the center. The stone itself was too 




36 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


heavy for him to lift alone, as was also 
the printing press. He would have to 
have help to handle these, and so he put 
on his coat and hat and went out to a 
carpenter-shop about halfway down the 
block. 

“I’ll tell you what I want,” said 
Harry, when the carpenter turned to 
him inquiringly. “I am in need of a 
narrow table about six feet long. It 
ought to be pretty strong, but pine 
wood will do. I want to put a printing 
press on it, a hand-press, weighing only 
about one hundred and fifty pounds, but 
in printing, the form is run through 
under an iron cylinder and this would 
make the table shake and quiver and 
rack it in due time unless tolerably 
strong. What will you charge me to 
make a table of this kind?” 

“Where is your press? Perhaps I had 
better take a look at it, and then I can 





READY FOR BUSINESS 


37 


tell better how strong a table to 
make,” said the carpenter. He seemed 
friendly and somewhat interested. “I 
didn’t know we were going to have a 
printing office in our town,” he con¬ 
tinued. “Are you its owner?” 

“Yes, sir,” said Harry. “I’m going 
to do job printing, and also I am going 
to publish a newspaper. I don’t know 
how well it will succeed, but hope the 
people here and in this vicinity will be 
pleased and subscribe. I have one sub¬ 
scriber already,” he added with a smile. 
“Mr. Garland, the station agent, told me 
I might put his name on my list as a 
subscriber, and that’s some encourage¬ 
ment.” 

“I’ll take the paper, too,” said the car¬ 
penter. “My name is Merwin, James 
Merwin.” He, like the station agent, 
seemed to have taken a liking to this 
young fellow who was possessed of such 


38 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


good business ambitions as to be on the 
point of starting a newspaper in their 
town, and he only a youth of about 
eighteen years. They were leaving the 
carpenter shop as he was talking, Harry 
leading the way. 

“Thanks,” said Harry. “I’ll enter 
your name in my subscription ledger 
along with Mr. Garland’s.” 

They were soon upstairs in the room 
where the printing press and material 
were, and Harry pointed to the press, 
resting on the floor. It was so small 
and unimposing-looking that the man 
almost smiled. “I wouldn’t have 
thought a newspaper could be printed 
on such a small press as that,” he said. 

“The table that I want you to make 
will be practically a part of the press,” 
said Harry. “In effect, I mean. You 
see, cylinder presses have an iron frame 
reaching to the floor, and actually a 




READY FOR BUSINESS 


39 


part of the press, while with this hand- 
press it is different, as I have to have 
the frame portion made extra, and as 
this little press isn’t heavy, a wooden 
table will do.” 

The carpenter nodded. “I see,” he 
said. “What you have explained is 
clear.” 

He stepped forward and lifted up the 
press, taking hold of the cylinder at one 
side. “I’ll make you a table strong 
enough to stand the grind of printing,” 
he said. “I’ll charge you three dollars.” 

“That will be cheap enough. How 
soon can you have it ready?” 

“By three o’clock this afternoon. I 
have some other work I have to do first. 
I’ll help you bring it up here, too, for 
good measure,” and he smiled. 

“Thank you,” said Harry. 

The carpenter departed and Harry 
set about other work he could do. He 







40 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


placed the type-cases on the rack, and 
the job-cases he slipped into place on 
the wooden flanges underneath the top 
cases, and then he put the labor-saving 
leads and slugs in an extra case he had 
purchased for the purpose and slipped 
it in under the type-cases; after which 
he began laying, as it is termed, the job 
and advertising type. This consists of 
putting the type in the job-cases. The 
new font is the type to which the word 
“laying” applies, specifically explained, 
and not to the second-hand type, which 
is tied up just as it was printed when 
last used for that purpose, and this is 
simply “thrown in,” as it is termed in 
printing parlance. 

When he had gotten all the job and 
advertising type laid and thrown in, 
Harry went to work on the body type. 
This was small-sized type, eight-point 
size, which is the size almost universally 




READY FOR BUSINESS 


41 


used in printing both country and 
metropolitan newspapers. All printing 
type is based on what is termed “the 
point system,” which means that the 
types are graduated sizes, differing in 
size from each other not less than two 
points, which equals one-eighteenth of 
an inch. Previous to the adoption of 
the point system, the type differed in 
size only one point, which was only 
one-thirty-sixth of an inch. This was 
deemed not enough of a difference, 
hence the adoption of the point system. 

The eight-point “body type,” as it is 
called, was all second-hand, and was 
tied up in paper, with a string around 
each lot of type, about five or six inches 
in size, just as it had last been used in 
printing. As there were about one hun¬ 
dred pounds—enough to fill two type- 
cases, both upper and lower, (the upper 
case contains the capitals and small 


42 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


capitals and the lower case the small 
letters)—this work could not be done 
quickly but would furnish Harry 
enough to do during thfe rest of the day. 
He had one of the cases, both upper and 
lower, filled by the time the carpenter 
had said he would have the table for the 
printing press finished. 

Putting on his hat and coat, he went 
around to the shop and found the table 
ready. He paid Mr. Merwin three dol¬ 
lars, then they lifted up the table, 
carried it out and down the street and 
upstairs into the printing-office. 

“Where do you want it put?” the car¬ 
penter asked. “Show me the spot and 
we’ll place the table there and then I’ll 
help you put the press on it.” 

“Here,” said Harry, indicating the 
point at which he wished the table 
placed. After placing it, they lifted the 
press and set it on the table. 








CARRIED THE TABLE DOWN THE STREET 



















































































































































































44 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“There,” said Mr. Merwin, with a 
smile. “There’s your press complete.” 

Harry nodded. “Thank you,” he said. 
“Yes, the press looks better on the table 
than on the floor.” 

“Quite right,” the carpenter said. 
“Well, I wish you success,” and de¬ 
parted. 

Another man came in just at that 
moment. He was one who had been at 
the railway station when the printing 
outfit was unloaded and had been 
aroused to dropping around by the 
usual incentive, curiosity. Harry put 
down some type he was just going to 
throw into the case, and nodding to the 
man, said: “I’m glad some big, able- 
bodied man dropped in. I have some 
lifting here that is too heavy for me 
alone. It’s this stone,” and he indicated 
the imposing stone resting on the floor. 
“I want it placed on this table,” and he 






READY FOR BUSINESS 


45 


nodded toward the stand that he had 
purchased for the stone to rest on. “Will 
you help me put it up there?” 

“Sure I will,” said the man good- 
naturedly, and he and Harry lifted the 
stone—with some difficulty, for it was 
pretty heavy—and placed it on the 
stand. 

Harry offered the man a quarter, but 
he wouldn’t take it. “I wouldn’t accept 
pay for doing a little lifting like that,” 
he said. 

“All right, and thank you, sir,” said 
Harry. “Perhaps I can do you a favor 
sometime.” 

In response to the man’s friendly 
questions, Harry told him his plans for 
starting a newspaper in Coalville, and 
for doing job-printing for the business 
men, and explained that he hoped to 
make a success of his business venture. 

“I guess you’ll do pretty well with 







46 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


your newspaper,” the man said, “for 
that’s something we’ve been needing, 
I’m sure, and I’ve heard some of the 
business men say they wished we had a 
paper here. You ought to get quite a 
good deal of job-printing to do, too.” 

“I hope so,” said Harry. “And thank 
you for your encouragement.” 

“That’s all right,” the friendly man 
said. “I wish you success. I’ll sub¬ 
scribe for your paper, dating from the 
first issue. My name’s Williams, Frank 
Williams.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Williams. I’ll put 
your name on my subscription list along 
with those of Mr. Garland, the station 
agent, and Mr. Merwin, the carpenter 
who made the table that the press rests 
on. They both subscribed.” 

“All right. I’ll call again and pay for 
a year’s subscription as soon as you get 
out the first issue.” Then he took his 
leave. 


READY FOR BUSINESS 


47 


Harry finished distributing the rest of 
the body type into the other pair of 
cases by half-past five o’clock, and then 
looked around him with considerable 
satisfaction. There was the new table, 
with the printing press resting on it. 
There was the table, or stand, with the 
imposing stone resting on it. There was 
the job-press in the corner, opposite the 
rack, and type-cases. There was the 
type-cases rack, containing the type- 
cases filled with body type on top, job 
cases with the job and advertising type 
underneath, and the case with the labor- 
saving leads and slugs in it. There were 
the wooden reglets, the composing 
sticks, a small one for body-type setting 
and a long one for setting jobs and 
advertisements. There were the ink- 
roller, the can of ink, the benzine can, 
the small collapsible tubes of various- 
colored job-printing inks, and other 
items of printing paraphernalia. 




48 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“Well, here I am with my printing 
presses and material all in place,” mur¬ 
mured Harry. “Now the real work of 
getting ready to publish the first issue 
of my paper will begin. I must see all 
the merchants, tell them how many 
papers I am going to print and get some 
advertisements from them, then set the 
advertisements. Then I will have to 
get news enough for the first issue, and 
will have to write a salutatory; how¬ 
ever, I’ll make that brief and to the 
point and of course friendly to the place. 
This and the local news items will have 
to be set, after which the forms will 
have to be made up, and all will be 
ready for the printing of the first num¬ 
ber of the paper. 

“The ready-printed sheets to print the 
local news on will be here a week from 
next Thursday, and I will get the paper 
out Friday afternoon of next week. 
This is Wednesday, which leaves three 


READY FOR BUSINESS 


49 


days of this week, and there will be four 
days of next week in which to do the 
work I have to do. I instructed the 
paper people to send me twenty quires 
of paper. That’s four hundred and 
eighty papers, and ought to be enough 
to start with. It only costs eighteen 
cents per quire, but I don’t want to 
print more papers than I will need.” He 
pondered a few moments, and then 
went on: “I haven’t decided what to 
name my paper. Let’s see, what shall 
I call it?” Again he pondered a few 
moments, and then said: “I’ll call it 
‘The Coalville News’. Yes, that’ll do. 
‘The Coalville News’ it shall be, and 
long live ‘The Coalville News’!” And 
with a smile he put on his coat and hat 
and went out, locking the door, and 
made his way to his boarding-house, 
where he did full justice to Mrs. Tomp¬ 
kins’ splendid supper of fried chicken. 





Chapter III 

THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 

Next morning, after going to the 
printing office and looking over his 
equipment, Harry noted that there 
was one item missing that he would 
require; that was a board on which to 
spread the ink. It would have to be 
eighteen inches long, as the ink-roller 
was fourteen inches long and there 
would have to be a few inches margin 
at each end. It ought to be as wide also, 
so he decided to have it made eighteen 
inches square. Pine boards, double 
thickness, covered with zinc, would do, 
and he went out to Mr. Merwin’s car¬ 
penter shop, told him what he wanted, 
an ink-board, and explained how he 
wanted it made. The carpenter told 
him he would make it for him. 


50 


THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


51 


“I’m in no particular hurry for the 
ink-board, Mr. Merwin,” said Harry, 
“as I won’t need it till I start to print, 
which will be a week from next Friday. 
But I want it to be ready then, so I 
came to you to have you make it for 
me, for fear I might forget it, and the 
printing of my paper be thereby de¬ 
layed.” 

“All right. I’ll have it for you by to¬ 
morrow.” 

“Thanks, Mr. Merwin, and by the 
way, I am just starting out to solicit 
advertisements for the first issue of my 
paper. Wouldn’t you like to have an 
advertisement in it?” 

“My business doesn’t need much 
advertising, as my work is my best 
advertisement. However, as I have a 
shop here on the main street, an adver¬ 
tising card would be logical, so you may 
put one in for me. Just say: ‘James 





52 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Merwin, Carpenter. House-building and 
repairing, and bench-work at my shop 
on Main Street, Coalville, Colorado.’ 
How much will that be per week or 
month?” 

Harry wrote the advertisement down 
in his notebook, and then asked: “How 
much space do you want the advertise¬ 
ment to occupy?” 

“Oh, an inch or two.” 

“The price will be ten cents per inch, 
single column, or twenty cents per inch, 
double column,” replied Harry. “That 
will be twenty cents per week.” 

“Make it a little larger and charge me 
a dollar per month,” said Mr. Merwin. 
“I’ll run it steadily, to encourage you 
for having started a paper here; besides, 
it may bring me some work that other¬ 
wise I might not have secured.” 

“True,” said Harry. “Thanks, Mr. 
Merwin,” and he went out, returning to 




THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


53 


his printing office, where he placed the 
copy for the carpenter’s advertisement 
under the planer on the imposing stone. 

“That makes me think of something,” 
he murmured, as he went out and 
downstairs to a hardware store a few 
doors distant. “Have you any copy 
files?” he asked of the proprietor, who 
came forward to wait on him. “I want 
the kind that you can hang on a nail on 
the wall, not the ordinary base-and- 
spindle kind that you place on a table 
or desk.” 

The man nodded. “Here is what you 
want,” he said, producing one of the 
kind that Harry had mentioned. 

“How much is it?” 

“Twenty-five cents.” 

“I want two.” 

The man produced another. 

“You needn’t wrap them up,” said 
Harry. “I haven’t far to carry them, 


54 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


only up to my office upstairs over the 
Gebhart grocery store. I have a print¬ 
ing office there, and these are to file copy 
on, one for ‘live’ copy, as it is called 
when it hasn’t been printed as yet, and 
the other for ‘dead’ copy, as it is called 
after it has been printed.” 

“I see,” said the man, looking at 
Harry with some interest. “Are you 
really going to start a paper here? I 
heard that you were going to do so.” 

“Yes, sir, and I am just starting out 
to secure advertisements for the first 
issue. You’ll want an advertisement in 

the paper, won’t you, Mr.-” 

“Warner’s my name, Thomas War¬ 
ner. Yes, I might give you an adver¬ 
tisement. How many copies of your 
paper are you going to print?” 

“Twenty quires—that’s four hundred 
and eighty copies.” 








THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


55 


“What is your price for advertising?” 

“Ten cents per inch, single column. 
That’s the rate. You can have as many 
inches of space as you want, and in 
whatever form—single column, double 
or triple-column, or a square of so many 
inches. You can suit yourself.” 

The merchant tore off a piece of wrap¬ 
ping paper, took a pencil from behind 
his ear, and wrote a few minutes, then 
handed the paper to Harry who read 
what was written there: 

“Thomas Warner, Dealer in Hard¬ 
ware. Lowest Prices and Courteous 
Treatment of Patrons.” 

“I’ll take ten inches of space,” said 
the merchant, when Harry had read 
the advertisement. “Make it single or 
double column, just as you like. I don’t 
doubt it’ll be seen.” 

“I’ll make it double column and five 
inches in length,” said Harry. “That’ll 





56 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


be ten inches of space, and it is a large 
enough advertisement so that it will 
look well in a double-column space. 
There isn’t much composition, but I 
can set it in larger type and make it 
look well. Thank you, Mr. Warner, for 
the advertisement.” 

“That’s all right, young man,” with 
a nod of the head. “I hope your paper 
will be a success. Our town is big 
enough to have a paper. That’s what 
we merchants have often told one an¬ 
other.” 

“I’m going to do job printing, too,” 
said Harry. “That will add to the earn¬ 
ings of the office and help to make my 
business a success. If you need any 
letter-heads or envelopes, or statements, 
or business cards, or any kind of job 
printing at any time, let me know, and 
I will do it promptly and at a fair price.” 

“All right, I’ll remember you when I 


THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


57 


need any printing of that kind,” and he 
turned to wait on another patron. 
Harry went out with his copy-hooks 
and advertising copy and made his way 
up to his office, where he drove two 
nails in the wall near the imposing 
stone and hung the copy-files on them. 
Then he stuck the two advertisements 
on the hook that he intended to use for 
the “live” copy. 

“That’s a start,” he said, with a look 
of satisfaction. “I believe I can get 
enough advertising to make it pay me 
pretty well. If the people subscribe for 
the paper, as I hope many of them will, 
and I succeed in getting quite a good 
deal of job printing, I ought to do pretty 
well.” 

Harry put in the rest of the day so¬ 
liciting advertisements and explaining 
that he was prepared to do job printing 
also. When evening came and he looked 




58 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


at the advertising copy hanging on the 
hook a smile of satisfaction appeared on 
his face. He had secured advertise¬ 
ments from nearly all the merchants in 
the town, and taking the copy and blank 
piece of paper and a pencil, he figured 
up the total advertising. He found that 
he had secured one hundred and eight 
inches of advertisements. This at ten 
cents per inch would amount to ten 
dollars and eighty cents. 

Of course this was for the first issue, 
but he did not doubt that most of the 
merchants would keep right on adver¬ 
tising, using about the same amount of 
space continuously. Ten dollars and 
eighty cents per week for display adver¬ 
tising, as the large advertisements are 
called, would amount to from forty- 
three to forty-five dollars per month, 
and after he had gotten out the first 
issue of the paper, he would be able to 





THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


59 


get quite a lot of what are termed “pay 
locals.” 

These are small advertisements in 
paragraph form inserted among the 
regular news locals. For these he would 
charge eight and one-third cents per 
line, or three lines for twenty-five cents, 
and most pay locals are about three 
lines long. He would thus increase his 
advertising receipts about twenty dol¬ 
lars per month, which would make the 
total amount about sixty-five dollars 
per month. With this promising start 
he felt encouraged and believed himself 
safe in expecting to make a success of 
the printing business and of the publish¬ 
ing of a newspaper in Coalville. 

Hanging the advertising copy back 
on the hook, Harry put on his hat and 
went out, locking the door, and went 
downstairs and out to the street. Just 
as he came to Mr. Merwin’s shop door- 


60 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


way a girl of about sixteen years 
emerged, coming face to face with him. 

“Elsie!” he exclaimed. “Why, Elsie 
Vaughn, how does it happen that you 
are here?” 

“Harry!” she said. “Harry Weston, 
I’m glad to see you again. How does it 
happen that I am here in Coalville, you 
ask? It’s simple as anything, for the 
answer is that I live here. And, Harry, 
my name isn’t Vaughn. My name is 
Merwin—Elsie Merwin.” 

“But,” said Harry, a puzzled look on 
his face, “how did you come to be re¬ 
siding in Allentown, where I made your 
acquaintance, when I was taking care 
of my invalid uncle?” 

“I wasn’t residing there,” with a 
smile. “I was merely visiting with my 
Aunt Lucy, that’s Mrs. Vaughn, and 
with the rest of the family. I knew you 
thought I was a member of their family, 






THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


61 


and intended to tell you I wasn’t, but 
your uncle died and you were busy help¬ 
ing with the funeral and I didn’t bother, 
and you went away the next day after 
the funeral and I didn’t see you again.” 

“Well, well!” exclaimed Harry, with 
a pleased smile. “This is a pleasant sur¬ 
prise to me. What do you think of my 
having put in a printing plant here in 
your town, Elsie, and of my having 
turned out to be a fellow-citizen?” 

“I think it’s just splendid, Harry!” 
with a bright smile. 

“Well, I’m glad you think that way.” 

Mr. Merwin came out of the carpenter 
shop at that moment. He had heard 
their conversation while putting on his 
hat and coat. He smiled and nodded at 
Harry in a friendly manner, and said: 

“Elsie told me about having known 
you in Allentown, and that you sup¬ 
posed her to be a member of the Vaughn 







62 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


family residing next to the home of your 
uncle. She said you’d be surprised when 
you met her and learned her name and 
that she resides here in Coalville.” 

“Yes, indeed, and a pleasant surprise 
it is!” said Harry. 

“Come around and see us, any eve¬ 
ning,” said Elsie. “We reside not two 
blocks distant from where you board— 
one block east and one-half block north. 
It’s the brown-colored house, on the 
west side of the street.” 

“Thank you,” said Harry. “I shall 
take advantage of your invitation some 
evening, after I have gotten over the big 
lot of work that I will have to do be¬ 
tween now and Friday of next week. 
That’s when I expect to get out the 
first issue of my paper. It’s to be ‘The 
Coalville News,’ Elsie, and I hope you 
and the rest of the people in Coalville 
will like it.” 




THE OUTLOOK ENCOURAGING 


63 


“I’ll like it, I’m sure,” she replied with 
a smile. “I can’t speak for the rest of 
the people, but I hope they’ll like it.” 
She nodded adieu and with her father 
went on down the street, while Harry 
made his way to his boarding-house, 
feeling very hopeful about his new 
venture. 






Chapter IV 


MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 

Next day Harry went to work setting 
the advertisements. It was slow and 
somewhat tedious work, but he had set 
jobs and some advertisements in the 
office of the weekly paper in Allentown, 
and had made good progress. In fact 
he set at least one-third of the advertise¬ 
ments that day, and put them on brass 
galleys. All his galleys were filled, how¬ 
ever, and so along toward evening he 
placed the two seven-column chases on 
the imposing stone. The chases are 
strong iron frames, in which the type- 
forms are placed and locked up, as it is 
termed, and thus made ready to put on 
the press. 

Next he took the long composing- 
stick, and adjusted it to the width of 


64 


MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 


65 


the seven-column page, viz., ninety-four 
picas, as it is called in printers’ parlance. 
There are six picas to the inch, and the 
width of a seven-column page is fifteen 
and two-thirds inches. He then select¬ 
ed a nice, plain, clean-faced type thirty- 
six point in size, from among his job 
and advertising type fonts and set up 
the heading of the paper: THE COAL¬ 
VILLE NEWS. 

This he placed in one of the chases, 
and then sawing a piece of pica-thick¬ 
ness reglet—maple wood—the proper 
length, fifteen and two-thirds inches, he 
placed this next to the heading of the 
paper. Then he placed a double-line 
head-rule next to the reglet, after which 
he set: Vol. I, No. 1. at the end of 
the stick. Then he put in some two- and 
three-em quads. These are metal the 
same thickness as the type, but not so 
high, coming up only about three- 





66 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


fourths of the height of the type, thus 
not receiving any ink when the form is 
inked and consequently not printing, 
the result being blank space. 

He then set the words: Coalville, 
Colorado, Friday, June 14, 19—. More 
quads were placed in the stick then, and 
over at the farther end were set the 
words: Price, Three Dollars Per Year. 
This line of type, called the date-line, 
he placed next to the pica-reglet. Cut¬ 
ting another length of pica-thickness 
reglet, Harry placed it next to the date¬ 
line, after which he placed another 
double-line head-rule next to the pica- 
reglet. 

He then put in the column-rules. 
These were brass, and of course extend¬ 
ed vertically, up and down the length 
of the chases, and fitted neatly against 
the lower head-rule. He put in some 
wooden blocks, a column wide, between 


MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 


67 


the column-rules, to keep them from 
falling down flat, as they were only six 
points, which is one-twelfth of an inch, 
in thickness. His advertisements, how¬ 
ever, were mostly two columns in 
width, and so he took out the first 
column-rule at the left-hand side, and 
one after another he set the advertise¬ 
ments in between the column-rules. 
This is called “making up the forms,” 
and applies to both reading matter and 
advertisements. 

Having filled the first two columns, he 
took the column-rule out at the right 
side, and filled those two columns with 
advertisements about one-fourth of the 
way down, that being all the advertise¬ 
ments he had set. At the center of the 
form, and between these two double¬ 
column rows of advertisements were 
four column-rules, and between these 
four column-rules were three columns 




68 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


of space. This space Harry intended 
to be mostly for reading matter, though 
he might put a few single-column adver¬ 
tisements at the bottom of one of the 
columns, and reaching up halfway. 
This would leave reading matter three 
columns wide, which he believed would 
look quite well. 

He had made good progress and felt 
quite well satisfied, and next day he set 
about half of the remaining number of 
advertisements. In the evening he filled 
the two columns that had not been 
filled, and having several more adver¬ 
tisements than would go on that page, 
he made up the other form for receiving 
them. This was more easy than the 
first form had been, as setting the name 
of the paper and the date-line had made 
it difficult. This other form had no 
heading. All he had to do was to place 
the double-line head-rule against the 





MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 


69 


chase at the top, and put in the column- 
rules, blocking them with the wooden 
blocks—called “furniture”—in between 
the column-rules to keep them from 
falling down. However, he took out 
the column-rule at the left-hand side, 
making a two-column space and set in 
the other advertisements, filling it about 
one-third of the way down. 

Next day he finished setting the rest 
of the advertisements and placed them 
in the form, filling out the double¬ 
column space; also he set into each of 
the forms about half a column of single¬ 
column advertisements. This finished 
the advertisement-setting, as there was 
no more copy. The next thing to do 
was to begin on the work of securing 
and setting the reading matter. It was 
only about one o’clock, and Harry sat 
down and wrote a salutatory, brief and 
carefully worded. This he set in type 


70 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


form in half an hour and placed it on a 
galley, after which he put on his coat 
and hat and went down onto the street, 
taking along a notebook and pencil. He 
went into the stores, the real estate and 
insurance offices, and to the city clerk’s 
office, and got news items from the 
clerks when they were not busy waiting 
on patrons, and from the city clerk. He 
also went upstairs into the doctors’, 
lawyers’ and dentists’ offices, where he 
also secured quite a few items. Then 
with his notebook almost filled, he went 
back to the printing-office to work at 
setting the news items. He set all of 
these before evening, then he laid the 
composing stick on the type-case and 
drew a breath of relief. 

“Another good day’s work done,” he 
concluded. “I have done better than I 
expected, and I see now that I can get 
the paper out easily by next Friday 





MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 


71 


afternoon. I have somewhat more than 
a column and a half of news matter set, 
and all the advertisements. That leaves 
only six columns of news matter still to 
secure and set, and I can do that in five 
days, I am sure. Besides I will get a 
twelve or fourteen-year-old boy to help 
me on Monday, and he can set some 
type. Yes, I’ll surely be able to get out 
the paper by next Friday.” 

Putting on his hat and coat he went 
out, locked the door and made his way 
downstairs and along the street. He 
had gone only a little way when he met 
a boy of about twelve years. Harry 
liked the boy’s appearance. He was 
bright-looking and alert, and was un¬ 
doubtedly intelligent. Stopping h i m 
Harry said courteously: “Excuse me, 
my boy, but I wish to ask you a ques¬ 
tion, if you are not in a hurry.” 




72 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


The boy stopped and looked at 
Harry. “What is it?” he asked. 

“I am Harry Weston, the owner of 
the printing-office upstairs over the 
Gebhart grocery store, and I am in need 
of a boy to help at the printing work. 
How would you like to learn the print¬ 
ing business? It’s a good trade, it is 
skilled labor and you can learn it gradu¬ 
ally; and I will pay you for your work 
at the same time.” 

The boy looked at Harry, evidently 
interested. 

“I might like the printers’ trade quite 
well,” he said. “I might work for you, 
but I couldn’t say right now, as I would 
have to ask my father about it first. 
Warner is my name, Tommy Warner. 
My father owns a hardware store.” 

“I know your father,” said Harry. 
“He has an advertisement in my paper 
that is to be issued next Friday. Ask 





MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 


73 


him about working for me, Tommy, 
and if he is willing for you to do so, 
come around to my office Monday 
morning about eight o’clock. Ask him, 
also, what wages he will be willing for 
you to work for. I’ll pay you fair 
wages.” 

“All right,” said Tommy. “I’ll ask 
him this evening, and will let you know 
Monday morning.” 

“That will be satisfactory.” 

Then Tommy went on down the 
street and Harry continued on in the 
direction of his boarding place. As had 
transpired a few evenings before, how¬ 
ever, just as he reached the Merwin car¬ 
penter shop, Elsie emerged. 

“Good evening, Harry,” she said. 
“How are you coming on with your 
work?” 

“Good evening, Elsie. I am doing 
quite well with my work. I have all 


74 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


the advertisements set and about a 
column and a half of reading matter. I 
gathered some news items this after¬ 
noon and set them in type-form.” 

“Good. I am glad you are doing so 
well, and by the way, since you have 
mentioned gathering news items, that 
makes me think that I might help you 
in that. I could get quite a lot of items 
without much trouble and would be 
glad to do so.” 

“That would be kind of you, and I 
would appreciate it very much. As I 
don’t know very many people here, it is 
hard for me to get news. Thank you 
for offering to help me. Having the 
news in the paper is an important mat¬ 
ter, as that is what the people look for 
and expect to find. If they didn’t, they 
wouldn’t care about subscribing. That 
makes it an important matter to me at 
any rate,” and he smiled. 





MAKING GOOD PROGRESS 


75 


“True,” she said, smiling also. “Very 
well, I’ll get all the items I can for you. 
By the way, I want to ask if you are 
going to attend Sunday school?” 

“I hadn’t given that matter any 
thought,” he replied, “but I guess I will 
do so. I can get up early enough, even 
though I am pretty tired. I want to 
attend the same Sunday school that you 
go to, Elsie, and I’m glad you men¬ 
tioned the matter, as I can go to Sunday 
school first. If you hadn’t mentioned 
it I might have gone to some other 
church, and after attending some other 
Sunday school even once, they might 
not have liked it if I had changed to 
another.” 

“True,” she agreed, “so I’m glad I 
mentioned the matter. I attend the 
Baptist Sunday school.” 

“I’ll be there to-morrow. What time 
does Sunday school begin?” 




76 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“At nine o’clock. I’ll look for you.” 

Then she went on down the street, 
and Harry made his way to his board¬ 
ing-house, went to his room, washed 
his face and hands, went downstairs 
and ate supper. 

“Knock on my door at half-past seven 
in the morning, please, Mrs. Tomp¬ 
kins,” he said as he was starting up¬ 
stairs to his room. “I am going to go 
to Sunday school.” 

“Very well, I will do so,” replied Mrs. 
Tompkins. And then to her husband, 
who was seated in a rocking-chair, read¬ 
ing, she said as Harry disappeared up 
the stairs: “I tell you, John, that’s a 
mighty good young man.” 






Chapter V 

A PLEASANT SUNDAY 

Mrs. Tompkins knocked on Harry’s 
door at half-past seven next morning. 
He got up and washed his face and 
hands, brushed his hair, and then 
donned his best suit of clothes. It was 
a neat-fitting suit and he looked very 
well. His shoes were of enameled 
leather and shone brightly, adding to 
his well - dressed appearance. H i s 
Fedora hat and his percale shirt and 
collar completed his attire, and his ap¬ 
pearance was such as to create a good 
impression in the onlooker’s mind. 

After breakfast he made his way to 
the Baptist church. In a place as small 
as Coalville it was not difficult to find 
any place one might be looking for. In 
fact there were only three churches in 
Coalville. 


77 


78 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


The church was about half-filled 
when he arrived, and a quick glance 
around showed him Elsie, who was 
seated with several other girls and one 
young man, near the piano. She had 
not told him, but Harry decided she 
was evidently a member of the choir. 
Elsie saw him as soon as he entered and 
nodded and smiled; he nodded in return 
and took a seat a few rows from the 
rear. 

After the singing, and the prelimi¬ 
nary words by the superintendent were 
over, the teachers took charge of the 
classes. The superintendent knew who 
Harry was and came to where he sat. 
Elsie came hurrying up the aisle at the 
same moment. “This is Mr. Harry 
Weston, Mr. Welborn,” she said. “He 
is going to print a newspaper here. He 
is going to attend our Sunday school, 
and please see to it that he is given a 




A PLEASANT SUNDAY 


79 


place in one of the classes and made to 
feel at home.” 

“I am glad to make Mr. Weston’s 
acquaintance,” said the superintendent. 
“I had heard about your having located 
here with the intention of printing a 
newspaper. We will be glad to have 
the paper, and I hope and trust it will be 
a success. I will assign him to the Busi¬ 
ness Men’s class, Miss Merwin. I think 
he will like that class and feel at home 
there.” 

“Thanks,” said Elsie, and with a 
smile at Harry, she hastened back to her 
own class, while the superintendent 
conducted Harry near the center of the 
church, where was a class of men of 
various ages, from the young business 
man of twenty-five years or thereabouts 
to forty years of age, and introduced 
him to the teacher, a nice-looking man 
of perhaps thirty years of age. 





80 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“This is Mr. Harry Weston, Mr. Wor- 
ling,” the superintendent said. “He is 
a business man. He has a printing office 
here and is going to publish a news¬ 
paper; so he can qualify for your class, 
and I am sure will be a good addition 
to it.” Then he made his way to the 
place where the Bible Class was, he 
being its teacher. 

“Glad to make your acquaintance and 
to have you as a member of our class, 
Mr. Weston,” said the teacher, shaking 
hands with him as Harry was entering 
the pew and taking his seat. “Men, 
this is Mr. Weston,” to the other mem¬ 
bers of the class, who nodded and said 
they were glad to know him, after 
which Mr. Worling gave Harry a les¬ 
son-leaf and began on the lesson. 

He was a good teacher, and talked 
and explained the lesson in an interest¬ 
ing manner and Harry enjoyed the hour 
spent in listening to him. 








A PLEASANT SUNDAY 


81 


A short talk by the superintendent, 
another song by the choir, with all the 
people in the church joining in the sing¬ 
ing, followed by a brief prayer by Mr. 
Worling, and the superintendent said, 
“Sunday school is dismissed.” The 
people rose from their seats and began 
making their way out of the church, 
talking to one another in a pleasant and 
cheery manner. There was to be a ten 
minutes’ intermission, after which those 
who wished to remain for the sermon 
would return to their seats. 

Elsie reached Harry’s side just as 
he was going through the big double 
doorway. “Father told me to invite you 
to take dinner with us, Harry,” she said. 
“He was not feeling well this morning 
and did not come to Sunday school. He 
isn’t really ill, and is sitting up, reading. 
Won’t you come? It’ll please father and 
me, and I want you to become acquaint¬ 
ed with mother. I told her, of course, 





82 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


that we made each other’s acquaintance 
when I was visiting Aunt Lucy at 
Allentown a few months ago.” Elsie 
made this last remark mostly to inform 
the people around her why she was so 
friendly to Harry and seemed so well 
acquainted with him. 

“Thank you, Elsie,” said Harry. “I’ll 
be glad to accept your kind invitation,” 
and he walked down the steps with her 
and up the street in the direction of her 
home. 

“That’s a nice-looking young man,” 
said one of two men who were standing 
on the porch in front of the church. The 
other nodded and replied: 

“Yes indeed. He seems to be pretty 
bright, and perhaps he will make a suc¬ 
cess of his newspaper that he intends 
publishing here. I hope so, at any rate, 
as it will give the town more prestige 
to have a newspaper.” 





"FATHER TOLD ME TO INVITE YOU TO TAKE DINNER 

WITH US.” 
























































84 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“True,” the other said. “He’s rather 
young to be running a newspaper, but 
he may be able to make a go of it.” 

The other nodded, and then they re¬ 
entered the church, as they were re¬ 
maining to hear the sermon. 

The two young people reached and 
entered Elsie’s home, and Mr. Merwin 
shook hands with Harry and greeted 
him pleasantly, and to a nice-looking, 
motherly woman who came in from the 
dining-room, Elsie said: 

“This is Harry, mother—Harry Wes¬ 
ton, whose acquaintance I made in 
Allentown while visiting Aunt Lucy 
and about whom I have told you. I’m 
glad you are to know each other.” 

“I’m glad to make your acquaintance, 
Mr. Weston—Harry, as Elsie calls you. 
I am sure we will be friends,” and she 
smiled and shook hands with him. 

“I’m certainly glad to make the ac- 






A PLEASANT SUNDAY 


83 


quaintance of Elsie’s mother,” said 
Harry, with a pleasant smile. 

They talked a few minutes and then 
Mrs. Merwin excused herself to return 
to the dining-room, and later went to 
the kitchen to look after the work there. 
She did her own housework with occa¬ 
sional help from Elsie. 

Dinner was ready and on the table at 
noon, and they ate appreciatively the 
good food that Mrs. Merwin had pre¬ 
pared. Harry enjoyed it, but he enjoyed 
more the company of such nice people. 
Elsie he honestly liked, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Merwin he thought highly of. 

After dinner the four of them sat in 
the big, comfortable front room and 
talked. They talked of various matters 
of interest, including the new paper that 
Harry was so soon to publish, and they 
told him they felt sure he would make a 
success, as they needed a paper in their 




86 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


town. He thanked them for their good 
wishes and said he would make a suc¬ 
cess if it were possible. 

At her father’s suggestion Elsie 
played some compositions on the piano 
and sang two or three songs that she 
had played and sung when she was 
visiting her aunt in Allentown. Harry, 
whose uncle’s house had been near 
enough to enable him to hear her play¬ 
ing and singing, remembered the songs 
and smiled in a pleased manner. 

“I used to hear you sing those when 
I was at my uncle’s home in Allentown, 
Elsie,” he said. “I liked them immense¬ 
ly, but I enjoy them better now, as I 
can hear your singing more distinctly.” 

“I’m glad you liked my singing—and 
still like it,” Elsie said with a smile. 

“Do you sing, Mr. Weston—Harry?” 
asked Mrs. Merwin 

“Only a little,” was the modest reply. 




A PLEASANT SUNDAY 


87 


“I used to sing tenor in the Sunday- 
school choir in the church in Dellwood, 
and some few people were so kind as to 
tell me I had a good voice, but I suppose 
they were saying it mostly to please 
me.” 

“Come and sing along with me,” said 
Elsie. “We’ll see whether those people 
were only saying what they did to 
please you.” 

Harry arose and stood by Elsie’s side 
at the piano while she played and sang 
one of the songs. Harry sang along 
with her, his tenor voice adding con¬ 
siderable to the rendition. 

“Those people that told you you had 
a good voice meant it, Harry,” she said. 
“Your voice is just splendid, and I am 
going to have you sing in the choir in 
our church. We need a tenor voice. 
Charley Martin sings bass, but his voice 
alone isn’t quite strong enough to offset 




THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


the girls’ singing, but with your tenor 
voice added to his bass, the music will 
be nicely balanced. I am going to tell 
Superintendent Welborn to appoint you 
a member of our choir next Sunday, and 
you must accept the appointment and 
sing with us regularly.” 

“Very well. I shall be glad to do so,” 
said Harry. 

He stayed till about four o’clock, 
when two of Elsie’s friends came, and 
he told Elsie and her parents that he 
must be going. They asked him to re¬ 
main and take supper with them, but he 
thanked them and excused himself, and 
took his departure. Elsie and her par¬ 
ents told him to come again. “And don’t 
forget,” said Elsie, smiling and shaking 
her finger at him as he was leaving, 
“that you are to sing in our choir at 
Sunday school next Sunday.” 





Chapter VI 

BUSY DAYS 

Next morning Harry was at the print¬ 
ing office by half-past seven, and at 
about eight o’clock Tommy Warner 
appeared, as he had promised to do. 

“What did your father say?” asked 
Harry. “Is he willing for you to work 
for me here in the printing office and 
learn the printers’ trade?” 

“Yes,” was the reply. “He said he 
guessed it would be as good a trade as I 
could learn.” 

“What wages did he say you might 
work for?” 

“He said for me to tell you that if 
you can afford to pay me three dollars 
a week, that would be satisfactory, and 
that he supposes I can earn that much.” 

“Certainly you can, Tommy. That 
will be all right, and I’m glad your 

89 


90 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


father is willing for you to work here. 
I need someone to help me. I could 
hardly do all the work myself.” 

“So I would suppose.” 

“You can set some type, right from 
the very first, and all that you set will 
be that much help. I have some items 
here that you can work on while I go 
down and look for more news. I want 
to get all the news I can, each day, and 
Iceep it set up in type form; then we will 
have quite a newsy paper when publish¬ 
ing day comes.” 

Tommy hung up his hat and coat, and 
went to the cases where the type was. 

“You’ll have to have a box to stand 
on,” said Harry. “You aren’t tall 
enough to reach the type in the cases. 
Run down into the store and ask Mr. 
Gebhart if you can have a carton. Tell 
him its for the printing office and to 
charge it to Harry Weston.” 






BUSY DAYS 


91 


Tommy nodded and hurried down¬ 
stairs, returning a few minutes later 
with a wooden box about eighteen 
inches high, which he placed on the 
floor in front of the rack holding the 
type-cases, and stepping onto it, he 
found that he could see and pick up the 
type nicely. 

Harry took the composing-stick in 
his hand, put the composing-rule in it, 
and then set a line of the news item, the 
copy for which he had placed on the 
case. He set the type slowly, so Tommy 
could see how it was done, and made 
such explanations as were necessary. 
He explained the use of the spaces, one 
of which is placed between each word, 
so they would not be all strung along 
together, in which form they could 
hardly be read. After he had set the 
line, he showed Tommy how to read 
the line, beginning at the left-hand side 





92 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


and reading across, the same as in the 
printed page, with this difference, that 
the type is bottom-side up, this making 
it somewhat harder to read, but quite 
easy after one has had a little practice. 

“If you get a wrong letter in a line,” 
explained Harry, “correct it before 
setting the next line. Some compositors, 
in fact most of them, never correct the 
type they have set until after it has been 
put on the galley and a proof taken. 
Then it is hard work and takes more 
time, and they are liable even then to 
‘pi’ some of it. That means that the 
type is liable to fall down and become 
mixed up, and sometimes has to be set 
over again. By correcting each line as 
soon as it is set, you make hardly any 
errors and don’t have to do any correct¬ 
ing on the galleys, and the type doesn’t 
‘pi’. I always correct each line as soon 
as I set it, and I never have to do any 





BUSY DAYS 


93 


correcting on the galleys. You had 
better do that way, too, Tommy.” 

“Very well,” said the boy, and then 
he took the stick in his hand when 
Harry handed it to him and began set¬ 
ting type. He had seen how Harry did 
it. Tommy did the same, though of 
course he was much slower. But he 
did quite well and his instructor could 
see that Tommy would soon become 
quite a good typesetter. 

“That’s all there is to it,” said Harry 
with a smile, as he was putting on his 
coat and hat. “Just keep picking up the 
type and putting them in the stick. I’ll 
be back before you will get the stick set 
and will show you how to ‘dump’ it, as 
taking the type out of the stick and 
putting it on the galley is called.” 

“All right,” was the reply, and Harry 
took his notebook and pencil and went 
downstairs and onto the street and be- 






94 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


gan his rounds of the stores and city 
offices in his search for news items. 

He returned to the office in about an 
hour with a new lot of items, and found 
that Tommy had set almost a stickful. 
Taking it from the boy’s hand, Harry 
pushed the composing-rule down behind 
the first line of type that had been set. 
There were leads between each line, and 
the one in front of the last line that had 
been set held the type in place, and 
Harry lifted the type—there were six¬ 
teen lines—out of the stick and placed 
it on a galley. 

“Y ou can do that after a little practice 
with a few lines at a time,” he said to 
Tommy. “From now on you can dump 
your own type, and during the first 
week at any rate, I wouldn’t try to lift 
more than seven or eight lines at a time, 
out of the stick.” 

“Very well,” said Tommy. He seemed 




BUSY DAYS 


95 


pretty well pleased with his new work, 
and taking the stick when Harry hand¬ 
ed it to him, went ahead setting type. 

Harry had had forethought enough to 
purchase two small composing-sticks 
and two composing-rules, so he took the 
other stick and rule and went to work 
setting type at the other case. When he 
had set the bulk of the news items he 
had secured, he put on his hat and coat 
and went out to complete the rounds of 
the places where he secured news. He 
had only gone about halfway around 
the first time. 

He was back again in about an hour, 
and in addition to the news items, he 
had secured a job of printing from one 
of the merchants, Mr. Holman, who 
owned a dry goods store. He wanted 
five hundred letterheads and five hun¬ 
dred envelopes, with his business adver¬ 
tisement on each. 





96 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry hung the news items on the 
“live copy” hook, and then went to 
work setting the two jobs. This he ac¬ 
complished in about an hour and a half, 
and by this time it was noon. 

“We’ll go to dinner now, Tommy,” 
he said. “We’ve done enough work for 
one morning.” 

Tommy nodded and smiled and put 
the stick up on the case, donning his hat 
and coat at the same time Harry did, 
and they left the office together, Harry 
locking the door. “Come back at one 
o’clock, Tommy,” he said. “From eight 
till twelve are the morning hours, and 
from one till five in the afternoon, with 
one hour for dinner. That is eight 
hours of working time, and we ought 
to be able to get out the paper each 
week and do what job printing there 
will be to do, working eight hours per 
day. If we ever do happen to get be- 





BUSY DAYS 


97 


hind and have to work later, I will pay 
you for the extra time you work.” 

“That is all right,” said Tommy, and 
parting at the foot of the stairs, they 
went their ways, Tommy to his home 
and Harry to his boarding-house. 

That afternoon Harry printed the 
five hundred letter-heads and the five 
hundred envelopes. The different kinds 
of stock for the job printing depart¬ 
ment — letter-heads, envelopes, state¬ 
ments, etc. — had arrived Saturday aft¬ 
ernoon, and Harry had stacked the 
packages up in one corner of the room 
without opening them. 

Then he helped Tommy set the rest 
of the news items, and they were 
finished by five o’clock. 

“We’ve done a good day’s work, 
Tommy,” said Harry, as they were leav¬ 
ing the office. “I believe we’re two 
pretty good printers,” and he smiled. 



98 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“There’s nothing like believing in one’s 
own abilities,” he added, “and if any¬ 
body doesn’t brag about us, we can do 
it ourselves.” 

“Yes,” said Tommy, and he went on 
down the street toward his father’s 
store, while Harry made his way up 
the street in the other direction. Elsie 
Merwin was standing in the door of her 
father’s carpenter shop when he reached 
there. 

“You’re just the person I wish to see, 
Harry,” she said. “Here are some local 
news items I secured for you. I wrote 
them down and intended to bring them 
to your office, but was busy and could 
not do so.” 

“Thanks very much, Elsie,” said 
Harry, as she handed him the news 
items. “We just finished setting all that 
I had gotten in the stores and offices, 
and these will do to begin work on in 





BUSY DAYS 


99 


the morning. Thank you very much 
indeed.” 

“I’m glad to be of help to you, and 
will get all the news I can, regularly. 
It’s a pleasure to me.” 

Her father called to her at that mo¬ 
ment, and with a nod and a smile she 
went back into the shop, while Harry 
went on to his boarding-house. 

The next day’s work at the printing 
office was about the same as the day 
before. 

“We’ll have enough type set to fill 
the paper by Thursday,” Harry said. 
“Then we can go to press Friday morn¬ 
ing, and that will give us all day to get 
the papers printed. I expect we will 
need that much time, for we have two 
forms to print from, and can only print 
one at a time, and there will be four 
hundred and eighty papers to print. As 
we will have to run them through twice, 







100 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


that will be the same as if we had nine 
hundred and sixty papers to print, and 
only have to run them through once.” 

Next day they set all the news there 
was, and Harry did a job of printing 
for Mr. Gebhart, the groceryman—five 
hundred statements; he also made up 
the two forms, as putting the type in 
between the column-rules is called. He 
didn’t have type enough to fill all the 
space as yet. There was about a column 
and a half of space still to fill, but he 
was sure they would have enough news 
items for it. If not, he could write an 
article about the town, something 
complimentary that would please the 
people, and this could be set and put in 
to fill up with. 

But he didn’t have to write that kind 
of an article after all, for an event took 
place that furnished something far more 
interesting to write about. 






BUSY DAYS 


101 


It was Mr. Tompkins who gave him 
the information. He was a miner, 
working in the smaller of the two mines 
that were being operated in Coalville. 
The manager of this mine was a some¬ 
what hard-headed, stingy man—so Mr. 
Tompkins declared—by the name of 
Morgan. He had had a number of 
foreigners shipped from New York— 
and was going to give them work in the 
mine, as they would work for smaller 
wages than the American miners 
already working there. There were 
seventy-five in all, and while Morgan 
would probably not discharge that 
many of the men already working for 
him, he would discharge some of them. 

“I may lose my job for all I know,” 
said the miner, with a sober look on his 
face. “Morgan and I don’t exactly 
agree, but I’m a good, strong man and 
able to do my full share of the day’s 






102 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


work, so he may not discharge me. 
Some of the men’ll have to go, though, 
unless Morgan can be induced not to 
give the foreigners work after all. I 
wish it could be done, but I don’t know 
whether it can or not, for he’s hard- 
headed and set in his ways.” 

“That is a pretty bad state of affairs 
for you home men,” said Harry, sympa¬ 
thetically. “As a citizen of Coalville, 
and naturally with my sympathies on 
the side of the home miners, both for 
their sakes and mine, I am willing to do 
what I can to try to prevent the foreign¬ 
ers from going to work more cheaply 
than the home miners, thus throwing 
some of them out of employment.” He 
paused and looked thoughtful for a few 
moments and then said: 

“I am going to publish a newspaper 
here, and as newspapers are influential, 
I don’t know but that I will inquire into 





BUSY DAYS 


103 


this affair as thoroughly as I can, then 
publish an article protesting against the 
home miners being thrown out of em¬ 
ployment. Don’t you think that would 
be a good idea, Mr. Tompkins?” 

“Yes, sir. Do it, young man!” said 
the miner. “I’ll stand by you, and so 
will all the other miners. Print a pro¬ 
test. When does your paper come out?” 

“Friday.” 

“And to-day’s only Wednesday. I’m 
afraid the paper will be out too late and 
the protest not be of much avail. How¬ 
ever, look into the matter, and if you do 
print it, even though it’s a day late, we 
may be able to oust the foreigners, even 
after they’ve begun work.” 

“All right, I’ll see to it and will in¬ 
vestigate the matter in the morning.” 

Harry made the rounds of the busi¬ 
ness houses next morning, beginning at 






104 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


half-past seven, and asked the mer¬ 
chants what they thought of the matter, 
telling them how Morgan, the manager 
of the mine—the Annex as it was called, 
as it was small compared to the main 
mine and subsidiary to it—was putting 
in a lot of foreigners and discharging 
some of the home men working there. 
The merchants, almost to a man, said 
they thought it was not right and very 
unfair; they deplored it and wished that 
it might be prevented. 

“The home miners all have families 
and patronize our stores, spending all 
their earnings here, while the foreigners 
are single men and would not spend 
much money with us,” one merchant 
said, and when Harry mentioned this 
to the others they all agreed. “We don’t 
like the foreigners to be given work and 
our own men deprived of their situa¬ 
tions,” another merchant said. That 






BUSY DAYS 


105 


was the general verdict among all the 
business men of the place. 

Having learned this, Harry told them 
that he would write and print the next 
day in the forthcoming issue of the new 
paper a protest against the foreigners 
being given work at the expense of a 
number of the home miners who would 
be thrown out of employment. Some¬ 
body must have told Morgan about this, 
for just as Harry had gotten through 
interviewing the merchants and was 
about to go upstairs to his office, he was 
confronted by a dark-visaged, danger¬ 
ous-looking man, who asked abruptly: 

“Are you Weston, who is going to 
print a newspaper here?” 

Harry nodded. “I am,” he replied. 

“I hear you are going to print a pro¬ 
test against my putting some foreigners 
to work in my mine—seventy-five of 




106 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


them there are, that I ordered sent here 
from New York.” 

“You are Mr. Morgan?” queried 
Harry. 

“I am.” 

“Do you own the mine?” 

The man hesitated. Then he said: 
“Not totally. I own it partly and am 
its manager.” 

Harry thought a few moments and 
then asked: “In case those foreigners 
work in your mine, how many of the 
home men will be thrown out of em¬ 
ployment?” 

“The foreigners are already at work. 
I just started them in, in the mine. I 
have already discharged forty of the 
men who have been working there, and 
may discharge more.” 

“The foreigners work more cheaply, 
I hear. That’s the point, as you look at 
the matter.” 





THEN LOOK OUT FOR YOURSELF, YOUNG MAN’' 



































































































108 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“That’s the point.” 

“But think of the families of the forty 
miners whom you have discharged. 
They might starve.” 

“The men can get work in the other 
mine, likely.” 

Harry shook his head. “I inquired 
about that. They have all the men they 
need already working there.” 

The man shrugged his shoulders. 
“They can move away to some other 
mining region, and get work.” 

Harry shook his head. “They own 
their homes here,” he said, seriously, 
“and don’t want to move away, and it 
is costly moving from place to place.” 

Again the man shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders. “That’s their own affair,” he said. 
“And discharging them is my own 
affair.” 

Harry shook his head. “I’m not a 
lawyer,” he said, “but my common 


BUSY DAYS 


109 


sense tells me that it is somewhat the 
affair of nearly everybody in this place, 
both of the men that have been dis¬ 
charged and especially of the mer¬ 
chants. The men, having lost their 
situations, will not be earning any¬ 
thing. They cannot patronize the mer¬ 
chants, as they wouldn’t have any 
money to pay for the merchandise. The 
merchants will lose the profits they 
would have made off the goods sold 
while the men were working and earn¬ 
ing their usual wages. Thus the mer¬ 
chants are injured financially, while the 
miners are indeed in serious circum¬ 
stances. I wouldn’t keep the foreigners 
working, Mr. Morgan, if I were you, 
and I would give back their situations 
to those forty home miners.” 

The man shook his head. “I am going 
to keep the foreigners working, and of 
course won’t give the old men their 


110 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


situations back, as I won’t need them,” 
he said. 

“Then I am going to write and print 
a protest in my newspaper that will be 
out to-morrow,” said Harry. 

Morgan uttered an impatient excla¬ 
mation. “Don’t do it!” he said. 

“I will!” said Harry. 

“Then—look out for yourself, young 
man, that’s all!” said Morgan, and he 
turned and strode away down the 
street. 






Chapter VII 


THE COALVILLE NEWS, 

Vol. I, No. 1 

Harry went upstairs and sat down to 
write an article about the discharge of 
the home miners as a result of the 
foreigners having been given work in 
the Annex Mine, then he went to work 
and set it up in type-form. It was the 
middle of the afternoon when he 
finished and there was a galley and a 
half in all. This, added to the local 
news items that Tommy set in the 
meantime, would be enough to fill the 
rest of the space in the forms, and 
Harry felt very well pleased. 

“I’m going to make up the forms now, 
Tommy,” he said, “and have them all 
ready so we can go right to printing the 
first thing in the morning. We may be 
in 


112 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


able to get the papers printed by noon.” 

He went to work making up the 
forms, as he had said, and soon had the 
type all in and evened up at the bottom, 
so that the foot-stick would fit up evenly 
against the lower ends of the seven 
columns of type. The foot-stick is of 
iron, and is about half an inch thick and 
two-thirds of an inch wide. There is a 
side-stick, also, that fits against the 
type lengthwise of the form. Between 
the foot-stick and the side-stick is a 
space of about half an inch, and in this 
space quoins are placed. 

These are cast-metal, nearly half an 
inch thick at the large end and sloping 
down to only about an eighth of an inch 
at the other end. They have indenta¬ 
tions and ridges in their top, these in¬ 
dentations and ridges alternating, and 
there is a key, as it is called, with a 
handle at the top and indentations and 




THE COALVILLE NEWS 


113 


ridges in the other end, which is about 
one-third of an inch in diameter. There 
are only four of these indentations and 
ridges in the end of the key, and they 
fit into the indentations and ridges in 
the quoins. When the key is twisted 
around and around by the handle, the 
two quoins, placed face to face with the 
large ends in opposite directions and the 
thin ends pointing toward each other, 
are spread apart. 

The flat, straight sides of the quoins 
pressing against the iron chase at one 
side and against the iron foot and side- 
sticks at the other, compress the type in 
the form and tighten it so that even 
though it consists of several thousands 
of little individual pieces of metal, viz., 
the type, spaces, quads, etc., it is all 
pressed together like one solid piece of 
metal. The form thus locked up, as it 
is termed, can be lifted off the imposing 





114 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


stone and carried and placed on the 
press to be printed from, or taken off 
the press and carried and placed back 
on the imposing-stone and the quoins 
loosened; this frees the individual pieces 
of metal from compression and the type 
can be taken out and thrown back into 
the cases, ready to be set up and be 
printed from again. 

Harry, having filled the forms with 
the type and fitted the sides and foot- 
sticks in, placed the quoins in between 
the foot-sticks and the side of the chase. 
These forms that Harry’s paper was to 
be printed from were seven-column 
ones. A form of that size requires two 
pairs of quoins at the foot, and three 
pairs of quoins at the side, to compress 
the type in the chase sufficiently, to hold 
them all in place and make the type as 
compact as one solid piece of metal. 






THE COALVILLE NEWS 115 

Harry had learned all this in the office 
in Allentown, and he placed two pairs 
of quoins at the foot and three pairs of 
quoins at the side pf each form, and 
pushed the two pieces constituting each 
pair of quoins together with his fingers. 
This was tight enough for the present, 
as he would not lock the forms up until 
ready to go to press in the morning. 
To lock them up tightly and leave them 
overnight caused the chases to spring. 
They are strong, but bend slightly when 
the forms are locked up tightly, and if 
the forms are left locked up too long 
and the chases thus become sprung, the 
whole form will “cave in.” A bushel or 
two of “pi,” or mixed and jumbled type, 
is the result. 

It is too tedious a job and takes too 
long a time to sort out and distribute 
such a large quantity of this mixed type. 
It is therefore thrown into a carton 


116 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


labeled “Old Metal,” to be sold back to 
the type foundries at the rate of about 
eight cents per pound. At the same 
time the publisher writes an order to 
the same type foundry to send him a 
hundred pounds of new type for which 
he pays about sixty cents per pound. 
Therefore printers have to be careful of 
their printing paraphernalia so that the 
profits of running their printing busi¬ 
ness will not be appreciably diminished. 

“I almost forgot something,” said 
Harry, turning to Tommy. “Run down 
to Mr. Merwin’s carpenter shop and get 
the ink-board that I had him make for 
me. It has been done several days, but 
it won’t be needed till the time comes 
to print, and I didn’t think tp get it.”. 

“All right,” said Tommy, and he went 
on the errand, returning in about ten 
minutes with the ink-board. 

“That’ll do first rate,” said Harry, 





THE COALVILLE NEWS 


117 


taking it and looking at it. It was made 
of two thicknesses of pine board nailed 
together crosswise, and was covered 
with a sheet of zinc. “It can be placed 
on that box you stand on to set type, 
when we go to print. You’ll have to 
do the inking, Tommy, by hand. See, 
here’s the ink-roller,” and he set the ink- 
board down against the wall and lifted 
the ink-roller out of a wooden box. 

The rollers used in printing are a 
composition composed principally of 
glue and molasses, soft on the surface 
and at the same time tough enough to 
stand a lot of use if carefully handled. 
This surface is smooth and at the same 
time slightly grainy, as it might be 
called, and the ink, when distributed on 
some smooth surface, adheres to the 
roller. Then when the roller rolls 
across the top of the type, the type is 
inked; and when paper on which any- 


118 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


thing is to be printed is placed on top 
of the type and strong pressure brought 
to bear upon it, the type-conforma— 
local news items, advertisements or 
whatever it may be—is impressed on 
the paper, this constituting the printed 
sheet. 

Ink-rollers have to be cleansed of the 
ink, and of dust or anything that gets 
on them, by benzine, which removes the 
ink, etc., without injuring the surface of 
the roller. Lye-water, diluted to the 
proper thinness, will remove ink from 
type-forms, but will ruin the surface of 
the ink-rollers, as the lye will eat into 
the molasses and glue compound. 

The ink-roller that Harry had pur¬ 
chased was fourteen inches long and 
about three inches in diameter. At the 
center, extending through from end to 
end and projecting half an inch or so, 
was what is termed the core, this being 


THE COALVILLE NEWS 


119 


an iron rod about half an inch in di¬ 
ameter, and such an iron rod, or core, 
is in all ink-rollers. The projecting end 
of the core fitted into holes in the ends 
of an iron frame, to which was fastened 
a handle to grasp while distributing the 
ink and rolling the roller across the 
form. 

“You can handle this ink-roller and 
ink the forms without difficulty, 
Tommy, as the roller isn’t very heavy.” 
He handed it to Tommy, who tested its 
weight and nodded. 

“Yes, I can handle it, I am sure,” he 
said. “It isn’t very heavy.” 

When five o’clock came Harry looked 
at the two seven-column forms with 
satisfaction, and nodded his head. 

“Everything’s ready, and we start 
printing the paper the first thing in the 
morning,” he said to Tommy, who 


120 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


nodded. “I hope the people will like 
the paper,” he added. 

“I’m sure they will,” the boy replied. 
“It’ll make the place seem livelier to 
have a paper.” 

“Y es, it’ll help some,” Harry re¬ 
marked, and then they went out and to 
their respective homes. 

Next morning they began work 
promptly at eight. Tommy placed the 
carton beside the table on which the 
press stood, and placed the ink-board 
on it, and then in accordance with 
Harry’s instructions placed some ink 
from the ten-gallon can on the ink- 
board. He rolled the roller back and 
forth and crosswise until the ink was 
distributed thinly and evenly. Mean¬ 
while Harry had locked up the first 
form, the one with the heading of the 
paper, and had placed it on the iron bed 
of the press; and this made the prepara- 






THE COALVILLE NEWS 


121 


tions for printing complete, as in addi¬ 
tion to making the forms ready to print 
from the evening before, Harry, assist¬ 
ed by Tommy, had folded the four hun¬ 
dred and eighty sheets of paper. As it 
was only possible to print one form at a 
time, the paper had to be folded. It was 
the “ready print” kind, one side of it, or 
two pages, already being printed, and 
consisting of foreign news, as opposed 
to local news. The four hundred and 
eighty sheets were stacked up on a table 
at the side of the press. 

“The paper is half printed already, 
Tommy,” said Harry. “Now let’s see 
if we can print the rest in half a day. I 
don’t know how fast we can print, nor 
how long it will take us to run these 
papers through, but if we don’t get it 
done by noon we’ll surely be able to do 
so by the middle of the afternoon. Now 
let’s get to work.” 




122 THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry placed one of the papers up 
against the heavy ducking, which, being 
sewed around a thin iron frame, consti¬ 
tuted the tympan, as it is called. It was 
the proper size to fit down over a seven- 
column form, the iron flanges fitting 
around the form, thus not coming down 
onto the type, and the thin metal frame 
called a friskit, fastened at the top pivot¬ 
ally so it could be lifted up and down. 
He pulled down until it fitted against 
the paper all around, thus holding it in 
place. Then he laid all three—the tym¬ 
pan, paper and friskit—down onto the 
top of the form, Tommy having inked 
the type from one end of the form to 
the other as Harry had instructed him 
to do. 

Then taking hold of the crank at the 
side next to him, Harry turned it 
around slowly, the iron bed with the 
form on it moving through beneath the 



THE COALVILLE NEWS 


123 


iron cylinder, which was adjusted to 
exactly the right height so that it 
pressed down tightly on the type-form, 
thus making a printed impression. This 
iron bed was moved along by strong 
steel cogs on the end of the cylinder 
next to Harry, these cogs fitting into 
cogs along the entire length of the iron 
frame of the press. A small press such 
as this needed only cogs at one end, as 
the cylinder had a steel projection at 
the other end about half an inch in 
diameter, that fitted into the hole in a 
portion of the iron framework of the 
press that extended upward, somewhat 
like a flange. 

When he had turned the crank till the 
bed of the press and the form had 
passed completely through and some¬ 
what beyond the cylinder, Harry 
stopped and lifted up the friskit, the 
paper lifting at the same time, and 







124 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


there was the front page of the first 
issue of “The Coalville News,” printed 
neatly and clearly, staring him and 
Tommy in the face. 

“How’s that, Tommy?” asked Harry, 
smilingly. “How does that look?” 

“Great!” said Tommy. “Jinks! I 
didn’t know it would look as well as 
that!” 

“I was sure it would,” said Harry. 
“You see, I worked in a newspaper 
office in another town, and helped print 
the paper, so I knew about how it would 
look.” 

Tommy nodded. “With the other 
page printed, it’ll be a nice paper,” he 
said. 

“You’re right, Tommy,” Harry 
agreed. 

He took the paper off the tympan and 
sat down to look it over to see if there 




THE COALVILLE NEWS 


125 


were any errors that would have to be 
corrected. He did not believe there 
were any, as he always corrected each 
line of type as soon as he set it, and 
Tommy had done likewise, in accord¬ 
ance with Harry’s instructions. Tommy 
had made a few errors, but Harry had 
corrected these while making up the 
forms. 

At the top of the first column Harry 
had placed his salutatory. It was brief 
and consistent, simply stating that “The 
Coalville News” was started with the 
hope that it would please the people of 
the town and vicinity, that they would 
subscribe for and read it; that he, as its 
publisher, would make it as interesting 
and newsy as possible, and that he 
would do his best to make it a benefit 
not only to himself, but to the town and 
community as well. At the bottom his 





126 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


name, “Harry Weston,” and the words, 
“Editor and Proprietor,” appeared. 

At the top of the next two columns, 
the type set double-column width and in 
large type, was the article of protest 
Harry had written—the protest against 
the foreign miners being given work in 
the Annex Mine and the home miners 
being discharged. On the top line, in 
twenty-four point type, or type one- 
third of an inch wide, Harry had printed 
the main heading of the article in the 
following words: 

NOT FAIR TREATMENT! 

Just below this, in eighteen-point 
type, was a secondary heading line, as 
follows: 

“Foreign Miners Employed in the 
Annex Mine—Home Miners 
Discharged!” 



THE COALVILLE NEWS 


127 


Below this he printed a third head¬ 
ing, in twelve-point type, as follows: 

“The Business Men of Coalville, In¬ 
cluding the Publisher of This 
Paper, Protest! They Hope to 
Get Mr. Morgan, the Annex 
Mine’s Manager, to 
Reconsider!” 

Then followed the article, printed in 
eight-point type, the size used through¬ 
out for the news portion, where Harry 
explained all he had learned about the 
employing of the foreigners by Mr. 
Morgan and the discharge of the home 
miners, that he had talked with all the 
merchants in Coalville, who were unani¬ 
mous in declaring Mr. Morgan’s actions 
as unfair treatment of the home miners; 
and that they one and all, including the 
publisher of “The Coalville News,” pro¬ 
tested, and approved of a protest being 





128 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


printed. This being the case, he, Harry 
Weston, the editor and publisher of the 
Coalville newspaper, had written and 
printed the protest; he hoped it would 
have considerable effect in getting Mr. 
Morgan to reconsider his unfair treat¬ 
ment of the home miners, and that it 
might lead to his discharging the 
foreigners and re-employing the home 
men. 

It was a good article indeed, well- 
written, and would make a good im¬ 
pression undoubtedly, as Harry had 
written it carefully, and it was couched 
in calm, conservative language. 

There were no errors to correct, so 
they went right ahead printing; in an 
hour and a half’s time they had printed 
the first page of each of the four hun¬ 
dred and eighty papers. Harry then 
took the form off the press and put it 
back on the imposing-stone. The form 






THE COALVILLE NEWS 


129 


was not too heavy for one to handle, as 
it weighed only about eighty-five 
pounds. He then washed the ink off the 
face of the type with a cloth moistened 
with benzine, unlocked the form by 
loosening the quoins, and then locked 
up the other form and put it onto the 
bed of the press. 

“The ink on the first hundred or so 
of the papers we printed is dry enough 
by this time so it won’t offset,” said 
Harry, “and by the time we get those 
printed the rest will be dry enough.” 
“Offsetting” means the smudging of the 
white, unprinted paper by the moist 
ink from the printed paper. 

They got the four hundred and eighty 
papers printed a little while before 
noon, and after he had taken the form 
off the press, put it on the imposing- 
stone, cleaned off the type with benzine 




130 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


and then unlocked the form. Harry 
turned to Tommy: 

“I’ll tell you what I want you to do, 
Tommy,” he said. “You can do it after 
you have eaten your dinner. I want you 
to get at least three other boys and have 
them come to the office with you. Get 
them here as soon as you can after din¬ 
ner. I want you four to distribute these 
papers into the homes of the people here 
in Coalville. You see, I haven’t any real 
list of subscribers as yet. I have them 
still to get, and I don’t know of any 
better way to get them to subscribe 
than to hand them sample copies until 
they do subscribe; and in due time I 
will have a regular bona fide list of 
subscribers and can send the papers 
through the post-office.” 

“Very well,” said Tommy. “I can 
get three boys to help, easily enough. 
We’ll be here soon after one o’clock.” 





THE COALVILLE NEWS 


131 


“Good, and thanks, Tommy. Tell 
them I will pay them a fair price for 
the work, and will hand them their 
pay as soon as they have finished.” 

“All right,” and Tommy hurried out. 
Harry followed, and locking the door, 
made his way downstairs and to the 
Tompkins home, where he ate quite ap¬ 
preciatively of Mrs. Tompkins’ good 
food. 

He had not been at the office more 
than ten minutes before Tommy ar¬ 
rived, accompanied by three other 
bright-looking boys. 

“Here they are, Harry,” he said. 
“These boys’ll help distribute the 
papers.” 

“All right. I’ll divide the papers 
among you. There are four hundred 
and eighty papers, but I want to keep 
sixty of them, as I am going to dis¬ 
tribute the paper in all the business 




132 


THEY 6 UNG PUBLISHER 


houses at the same time you boys are 
distributing them in the homes. That 
leaves four hundred and twenty, which 
will be one hundred and five for each 
of you. I’ll count them out.” 

He did so, and found that there were 
fifteen extra copies. “They put these 
in for good measure, I suppose,” he 
said. “I’ll keep them in the office, as I 
want two to put on file, and there may 
be a few people who will come in and 
want an extra copy. Now go ahead, 
boys, and be sure and leave a paper at 
each house. The best way to do will 
be to divide the town up into four sec¬ 
tions, and each deliver papers in his 
section. That will be more systematic 
than haphazard delivery and you will 
not be so likely to miss any houses.” 

“All right,” said Tommy, and the 
other boys nodded. They went down¬ 
stairs, discussing among themselves 




THE COALVILLE NEWS 


133 


which boy should deliver papers in each 
of the different sections. 

Harry then, with the sixty papers 
under his arm, went downstairs and 
made his way from store to store, then 
upstairs into the professional offices and 
into the city clerk’s office. He did not 
stop to talk to the merchants, but simply 
handed them the paper, or laid it on the 
counter, and went on. It was done in 
three-quarters of an hour. He returned 
to his office and sat down to rest, as he 
had worked pretty hard and was tired. 
Taking up one of the papers he began 
looking it over while waiting for the 
boys to return. 

They did not get back till nearly four 
o’clock. “We delivered the papers at 
all the houses,” said Tommy. “We only 
had three papers left, and I brought 
them back.” He handed them to 
Harry, who placed them on the table. 




134 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“That’s good,” he said. Then turn¬ 
ing to the other boys, he added: “How 
much do I owe you for distributing the 
papers?” 

They glanced at one another, and then 
one said: “I guess fifty cents apiece 
would be about right.” He glanced at 
the other two and they nodded. 

“That is all right, and reasonable 
enough,” said Harry, and he handed 
each of them a fifty-cent piece. 

“Thanks,” they said, and then the one 
who had spoken up added: “If you 
want us to carry papers each week, we 
will do so.” 

“Yes, I will want you to do so for a 
few weeks at any rate,” was the reply. 
“Come up to the office every Friday 
about one o’clock.” 

“All right, we’ll be here,” the same 
boy said, and the other two nodded, 




THE COALVILLE NEWS 


135 


then they left the office and went down 
onto the street. 

At five o’clock Harry and Tommy 
went to their homes. 

Harry’s paper, “The Coalville News,” 
the first issue of which the people read 
with interest, pleased them very much 
and was the subject of much favorable 
comment. 






Chapter VIII 
THE MASS MEETING 

Harry had only been in his office a 
few minutes next morning when the 
door opened and Morgan, the manager 
of the Annex Mine, entered. His face 
wore a dark look, and Harry almost 
thought he was to be feloniously as¬ 
saulted, but he nodded to the man and 
said courteously: 

“Good morning, Mr. Morgan.” 

The man did not return the saluta¬ 
tion, but said curtly instead: “I want a 
copy of your paper.” 

Harry stepped to the table, took up 
one of the extra copies of “The Coal¬ 
ville News” and handed it to him. The 
man threw a dime on the table and 
turned and walked to the door, then 
stopped, half-turned toward Harry and 
said: 


136 


THE MASS MEETING 


137 


“This article in your paper, this ‘pro¬ 
test’, as you call it, has occasioned a 
good deal of adverse comment toward 
me.” 

“Is that so?” remarked Harry. 

“Yes, some of the business men came 
out to the mine yesterday evening to 
show me the article and tell me that I 
had better reconsider and discharge the 
foreigners and re-employ the home 
men. They told me they had approved 
of your printing the article, and for me 
not to be angry at you individually, as 
you had interviewed them about it; that 
it was what might be called ‘a consen¬ 
sus of opinion’ article, that they all 
stood behind you; and they contended 
that it was a ‘just and right’ view of 
the matter that is expressed in the 
article. I maintained, and still main¬ 
tain that I have a right to run my busi¬ 
ness in accordance with my own ideas, 





138 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


but I’m a citizen here myself. I have my 
home here, and I may decide to recon¬ 
sider the matter of employing the 
foreign miners and may discharge them 
and re-employ the home men. At first 
I was pretty angry when I saw this 
article and I told the committee of mer¬ 
chants that I considered it unjustifiable 
meddling with my business. But there s 
the other side to the matter—the way 
you and the other business men of the 
town and most of the people, generally 
speaking look at it, and I have changed 
my mind to some extent, but not totally. 
I can see, as you say here in this article 
and as you told me yourself, that the 
throwing of the home men out of em¬ 
ployment loses trade to the home mer¬ 
chants and that makes it logical for 
them to protest. I’ll think it over to¬ 
day and come to a decision.” 

Harry nodded. “I hope you’ll decide 





THE MASS MEETING 


139 


to reconsider and re-employ the local 
men,” he said. 

Morgan made no reply, but opened 
the door and went out. Tommy War¬ 
ner was just coming to work, and met 
the man on the stairs. He looked at 
Harry inquiringly. 

“I thought maybe Morgan had come 
up here to thrash you, Harry,” he said. 

Harry smiled and shook his head. “I 
didn’t quite know about it myself, 
Tommy, until after he had shown him¬ 
self as being in a tolerably amicable 
frame of mind.” 

“He wanted a copy of the paper.” 

“Yes, he bought a copy,” and Harry 
picked up the dime and placed it in his 
pocket. 

“Well, I hope it’ll do him some good,” 
the boy said. “What shall I do first?” 

“Y ou can go to work throwing in the 
type, Tommy. I’ll show you how it is 
done.” 



140 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry took a sponge and dampened 
it and then dabbed it down on top of 
the type in one of the forms, thus 
moistening the type. “You can dis¬ 
tribute it better when the type is moist, 
Tommy, as the type sticks together and 
doesn’t fall to pieces so easily,” he ex¬ 
plained. “Come here and I’ll show you 
how to throw the type in.” 

He went to the case and Tommy 
came and stood beside him. Harry took 
a word off the top of the type in his 
hand, a dozen lines or so, that he had 
picked up out of the form on the im¬ 
posing-stone and placed it in the palm 
of his hand. The word that happened to 
be there was, “difficult.” “It’s done this 
way, Tommy,” he said. “See, this is the 
word ‘difficult.’ Now you know where 
the compartments are, in the case, that 
contain each of the letters of the alpha¬ 
bet, and all you have to do is this: Reach 





THE MASS MEETING 


141 


out your hand and hold it suspended 
over each compartment that contains 
the type of the letters in the word you 
are distributing-, and twirl each indi¬ 
vidual type with your thumb and 
fingers, and drop them into the proper 
compartments, one after another.” He 
reached out his hand and poised it over 
the compartment holding the type of 
the letter “d”, and twirling this type 
with his thumb and fingers, dropped it 
into that compartment. Then he moved 
his hand till it was over the compart¬ 
ment containing the letter “i”, and 
dropped it in like manner, and then on 
to the compartments, “double-f, i, c, u, 1 
and t,” thus completing the word. “You 
see, it’s simple as can be, Tommy,” he 
said, “only it takes practice to enable 
one to distribute rapidly. That’ll come 
in time.” 

Tommy nodded, and then Harry 




142 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


showed him how to pick up the type 
out of the form and place it in the palm 
of his left hand. The boy took only six 
lines, as Harry told him that would be 
enough to take at first, as taking too big 
a handful might result in the type fall¬ 
ing apart in his hand, and becoming 
“pi,” which is the printers’ detestation. 
He went to the case with Tommy. 

“What’s the first word?” Harry asked. 

“ ‘Hearing’,” was the reply. 

“Slip it off with your thumb and first 
two fingers.” 

Tommy did so. 

“Now do the same as I did. Hold 
your hand over the letter ‘h’ compart¬ 
ment.” 

Tommy did as told. 

“Now twirl the ‘h’ type with your 
thumb and finger and drop it into the 
compartment.” 

Tommy did so, doing it quite well, a 



THE MASS MEETING 


143 


little awkwardly of course, but as well 
as anyone can do at first, for distribut¬ 
ing type is even more difficult than set¬ 
ting it, and it takes longer to acquire 
speed; but when one has acquired the 
knack of distributing type rapidly it can 
be distributed about four times as fast 
as it is possible to set it. The work of 
composition, as type-setting is called, is 
tedious and cannot be done very rapid¬ 
ly; slow and careful composition is best, 
as it can then be set correctly, and no 
time is lost. The distributing can be 
done much more rapidly, but it is neces¬ 
sary to be careful in the distributing 
also, for if the type is thrown into the 
wrong compartments, these wrongly- 
distributed letters would be picked up 
and placed in the stick, more errors thus 
resulting. 

“Do the same with each of the type in 
the word, Tommy,” said Harry, and 




144 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Tommy did so, dropping the letters “e, 
a, r, i, n and g,” respectively, in the 
proper compartments. 

“That’s the way,” said Harry. “You 
have the idea, and all you have to do is 
to keep at it, and you’ll be able to throw 
in a lot of type in a day, even though 
you haven’t had much experience at the 
printing business.” 

Harry went down onto the street and 
into several of the stores to ask their 
owners’ opinion as to whether Morgan 
would reconsider employing the 
foreigners. These business men told 
him they could not say what the mine 
manager’s decision would be. 

“I’m a little afraid he won’t recon¬ 
sider,” said Harry to each of these men, 
“and if he doesn’t, what will you busi¬ 
ness men do?” 

“He’ll have to reconsider,” each of 
these men had said. 





THE MASS MEETING 


145 


But he didn’t. He came into town 
that evening and told the business men 
he would not reconsider, that he had a 
right to run his business his own way 
and would not be dictated to. Several 
of them argued with him, but to no 
avail, and after making some purchases 
at one or two of the stores, he went to 
his home. The business men he had 
talked to, however, were not satisfied, 
and went around to all the other busi¬ 
ness men and talked the matter over 
with them, with the result that two of 
them came up to the printing office and 
told Harry they wanted some posters 
printed. 

“We’re going to call a mass meeting 
in the town hall this very evening,” they 
said. “How soon can you have them 
printed? There won’t be much type to 
set. Here’s the copy.” 

The one that had spoken handed 






146 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry a sheet of paper with some writ¬ 
ing on it, and he read the few words 
written there, which were as follows: 
“Mass Meeting! At City Hall at 8 
o’clock. Everybody come. Discharge 
of forty of our home men by the man¬ 
ager of the Annex Mine to be discussed. 
Very important. Come!” This was 
signed, “Committee.” 

“I can set it and print the posters in 
half an hour,” said Harry. “How many 
will you want?” 

“Five hundred ought to be enough. 
We want them distributed into all the 
houses. Can your boy do that?” glanc¬ 
ing at Tommy. 

“He and three other boys will do it,” 
was the reply. “He’ll get them to help 
him, just as they did when they dis¬ 
tributed my papers yesterday after¬ 
noon.” 

“All right. Attend to it, Weston, and 



THE MASS MEETING 


147 


charge it to any of us merchants. On 
second thought, it will be better to 
charge it to me, and the others will re¬ 
imburse me.” 

“Very well,” said Harry, and the two 
men hastened out and returned to their 
stores. 

“You go and get the boys,” said 
Harry, “so they’ll be here, ready to dis¬ 
tribute the posters as soon as they are 
printed.” 

Tommy nodded and hurried out 
while Harry went to work setting the 
type for the printing of the poster. He 
had it done by the time Tommy and 
the other boys arrived, and locking up 
the form, he put it on the job-press, 
“made ready,” as it is called, viz., he 
printed one impression of the type on 
the tympan sheet, on the platen. This 
is an iron frame with a smooth, plane 
surface of steel, with some paper and a 




148 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


sheet of cardboard on this plane surface, 
sufficiently thick so that it won’t mash 
the type. It will instead make a nice 
clean imprint from the type, inked by 
rollers rolling across the type’s top. The 
face of the type presses firmly against 
the paper that is placed on the tympan- 
sheet, the pressure being automatic, and 
is between the main body of the press, 
with the form in it and this platen-por¬ 
tion, which works back and forth. The 
paper and cardboard on the face of this 
steel platen are held in place by the 
tympan-sheet, which is of paper also. 

This impression from the type in the 
form made it possible for Harry to place 
the gauge-pins properly, so that the 
poster-sheet would be printed with even 
margins on its top and bottom and 
sides. The sheets are placed on the 
tympan-sheet, against two gauge-pins 
at the bottom and one at the left-hand 



THE MASS MEETING 


149 


side. The gauge-pins are about an inch 
long, are of thin metal, and have a little 
flange at the top; they project upward 
from the surface of the tympan-sheet 
about a quarter of an inch, and thus 
keep the paper sheets being printed 
from slipping out of place or having un¬ 
even margins. 

Having placed the gauge-pins in the 
tympan-sheet properly, Harry went 
right to work printing, and in about 
twenty-five minutes he had the five hun¬ 
dred posters printed. 

“Take them and distribute them, 
boys,” he said. “Leave one at each 
house, just as you did with the papers 
yesterday.” 

“Shall we leave one at the home of 
Mr. Morgan?” asked Tommy. 

“Yes. He will want to know about 
it, and we’ll be fair and not do anything 




150 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


surreptitiously. He may even come to 
the meeting, and I hope he will.” 

“He’d feel a little bit out of place and 
ill at ease, I expect,” said Tommy, “but 
he may make up his mind to attend the 
meeting.” 

Then the boys hurried out with the 
posters, which they distributed in about 
three-quarters of an hour’s time. 

The people were somewhat excited 
when they read the posters. “A mass 
meeting!” they exclaimed, and then to 
one another they said: “We’ll be there. 
It’s to discuss the discharge of the home 
men from the Annex Mine. That is 
such a wrong against our miners that 
we’ll attend the meeting and do all we 
can to help get the wrong righted.” 

At eight o’clock the town-hall was 
crowded almost to overflowing, and just 
after Mr. Holman, the dry goods mer¬ 
chant, who had been appointed chair- 




THE MASS MEETING 


151 


man by acclamation had called the 
house to order, Mr. Morgan entered, 
and walking up the center aisle, sat 
down on one of the front seats. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Chairman and you 
people,” he said, looking around at the 
audience, “but I believe I have a right 
to be heard in this affair, and that is 
why I am here. Now go ahead with 
your meeting.” 

“Jinks, he did come!” Tommy War¬ 
ner whispered to the other three boys 
who had helped him distribute the 
posters, and who were seated back by 
the door. “I thought he would!” 





CHAPTER IX 

THE MINE DISASTER 

Mr. Holman, the chairman, made 
quite a good speech, explaining the pur¬ 
pose of the meeting at some length, and 
stating that it was the consensus of 
opinion among the business men that 
the discharging of the miners was too 
serious an injustice to pass unnoticed; 
and it was desired to get the opinion 
of all the people of the town regarding 
the matter. He spoke conservatively, as 
he did not want to hurt the feelings of 
Mr. Morgan, but as it was the towns¬ 
people’s meeting, called by the business 
men, he added that Mr. Morgan was 
there on his own responsibility. It was 
only right therefore that he should be 
willing to put up with the explanation, 
even though adverse to him and to his 
interests. 


152 


THE MINE DISASTER 


153 


With the explanation of others of the 
citizens, including- those made by sev¬ 
eral of the miners who had been dis¬ 
charged and who spoke quite feelingly, 
the mine-manager sat through it all, 
over a period of at least an hour, with¬ 
out saying a word, and waited, as was 
right and proper, till the people had 
gotten through discussing the matter at 
issue. Then Mr. Holman, rising from 
his chair and looking around over the 
room, said: 

“I believe everybody has had a say 
who cares to say anything, other than 
Mr. Morgan, and as he is here, we would 
like to hear what he has to say.” 

“Hear! Hear!” was the cry from 
many, and others said, “Yes, yes! Let’s 
hear from Mr. Morgan!” 

Mr. Morgan, although a rather grim- 
visaged man, smiled. During all that 
hour of time he had listened to the ex- 





154 THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


planations and protests against the 
home miners being thrown out of em¬ 
ployment; and had been cogitating and 
turning the matter over in his mind, and 
had already come to a decision, for he 
rose and said briefly: 

“I have heard the protests that have 
been made against the home miners 
being thrown out of employment by my 
employing the foreign miners. After 
studying the matter, I have decided to 
reconsider, and will discharge the for¬ 
eigners and re-employ the home men. 
I’m a home man myself, since I come 
to think about it, and wouldn’t like to 
be thrown out of employment. The for¬ 
eign miners don’t like it here very well, 
anyhow, they tell me, and won’t mind 
it so very much. They don’t like to be 
so far inland, away from the seaport, 
New York, as it would cost them too 
much to get to the seaport when start- 




THE MINE DISASTER 


155 


ing back home to their native country. 
They would rather work in the mines in 
Pennsylvania. Yes, I have reconsidered, 
and the foreigners will leave tonight, to 
return to Pennsylvania. The local men 
can all return to work Monday. Good¬ 
night,” and he turned and left the hall. 

“Mr. Morgan has decided rightly,” 
said Mr. Holman, “and I am glad of it, 
as are all the rest of you that are here, 
Pm sure. The meeting is adjourned.” 

The people poured out of the building 
and made their way to their homes, dis- 
' cussing the meeting as they went, and 
all expressed themselves as glad that 
Mr. Morgan had considered re-employ¬ 
ing the home miners so that he would 
have them back at work again Monday 
morning. 

“I thought maybe Mr. Morgan 
would be angry and cause some trouble 
before the meeting was over,” said 



156 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Tommy to his three confreres as they 
walked up the street, “but he didn’t, and 
turned out to be reasonable instead.” 

“Sure he did,” replied one, “and I 
guess it’s better that way.” 

Perhaps of all who were at the meet¬ 
ing, Harry Weston was the most 
pleased by the result. It was his news¬ 
paper that had printed the protest that 
had resulted in the calling of the mass 
meeting. Harry naturally felt pleased 
that the protest had carried and that 
Mr. Morgan would put the local men at 
work again the coming Monday. 

“That makes matters all right again, 
here in Coalville,” he said to himself, 
“and there won’t be so many sorrowful 
hearts. Well, my paper has done some 
good—indeed quite a good deal of good, 
already, and that will make it more sat¬ 
isfactory to the people here as they will 
subscribe for it more readily and give it 




THE MINE DISASTER 


157 


better support. That is business! That’s 
what I started the paper for, and I’m 
glad I was lucky enough to get a chance 
to have something in the first issue of 
more than usual importance. Yes, I 
think ‘The Coalville News’ is a per¬ 
manent fixture in the mining town of 
Coalville.” 

Next day, at Sunday school, Harry 
sang tenor in the choir, and sang well. 
Elsie was quite pleased, and the other 
members of the choir seemed glad to 
have him aid in the singing. In truth 
the singing was better balanced and 
more pleasing, and the people in the 
church noticed this fact, and were 
pleased also. 

As on the previous Sunday, Elsie in¬ 
vited Harry to take dinner with them, 
and he accepted the invitation and ac¬ 
companied her home. Her parents were 
courteous and friendly to him, and he 






158 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


enjoyed the good dinner that Mrs. Mer- 
win had prepared. He spent a very 
pleasant afternoon, singing an hour or 
so in company with Elsie, who played 
her favorite songs on the piano and 
sang them. Then they discussed the 
matter of the mass meeting, telling 
Harry that they deemed his paper was 
quite largely responsible for bringing 
this about, that it was creditable to him 
and proved that a newspaper is of value 
to the town in which it is printed. 

Harry told them he was glad they 
looked at it that way. 

They could not persuade Harry to re¬ 
main to supper, and he left at about 
half-past four o’clock and returned to 
his boarding-house. Mr. Tompkins was 
sitting in the front room, reading, but 
as Harry entered, he looked up and said: 

“Well, the protest you printed in your 
paper resulted in the home men being 




THE MINE DISASTER 


159 


given their situations back again in the 
mine. I’m glad you printed it, as it was 
materially beneficial to those forty 
miners and their families. It is to your 
credit, too, and ought to give you a feel¬ 
ing of satisfaction.” 

“You are right, Mr. Tompkins,” said 
Harry, “and I’m glad I printed the pro¬ 
test. Thanks for your kind words,” and 
he went on upstairs to his room. The 
foreign miners left that night, and next 
morning the forty home men that had 
been discharged went back to work in 
the Annex Mine. 

Everything was quiet once again, but 
at about noon the quiet was broken by 
the news that there was a cave-in in the 
big mine, which was located about half 
a mile north of town. It had caved in 
at about the middle, so one of the 
miners informed the townspeople, and 
those working in the front portion were 




160 


the young publisher 


separated from those working in t e 
back portion of the mine by a wall of 
earth and stone reaching from the floor 
to the ceiling. How thick this wall of 
earth and rocks was could only be 
guessed at, the miner said, but it must 
be at least a hundred feet in thickness, 
and perhaps more, as those in front of 
whom he was one, could not hear the 
voices of their fellow miners when they 
called to them. 

Perhaps the mine had caved in all the 
way back, he added, in talking to some 
of the business men, and in that case the 
men who had been working at the back 
—or about half the total number work¬ 
ing in the mine—would be dead, either 
crushed or smothered to death by the 
hundreds of tons of debris that would 
be on top of and encompassing them 
about. “However, maybe there are only 
a hundred feet or so of the dirt and 





THE MINE DISASTER 


161 


stone,” he said in conclusion, “and in 
that case we can dig through in a day or 
two and save the lives of those who 
haven’t been crushed to death. Likely 
some of the men were caught under the 
dirt and stone as it fell, and were killed,” 
he added. “It came down suddenly, with 
a crash, and the men wouldn’t have had 
time to get out of the way.” 

“That is serious indeed,” said one of 
the business men. “Well, I hope that 
there weren’t any of them caught under 
the falling debris. As for the others, if 
they don’t smother and can be gotten 
out in a day or two, they will be all 
right, their worst foe being the lack of 
food and water.” 

“That’s the way of it,” said the miner, 
and he hastened back up toward the 
mine. Hundreds of people were doing 
likewise, the news having become dis¬ 
seminated throughout the town almost 


162 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


in a twinkling. Men, women and chil¬ 
dren were hastening to the scene of the 
disaster. 

Harry Weston heard of it, of course, 
and he told Tommy that he would go 
up to the mine at once, and that he 
could do so also. Then they left the 
office and joined the throng hurrying 
toward the mine. 

Harry, as soon as he arrived, inter¬ 
viewed different miners who had been 
working in the mine when the cave-in 
took place, and secured all the informa¬ 
tion he could. Men were being sent 
down in the “cage,” or box about four 
feet square that the men use to enter or 
leave the mine, in order to commence 
the rescue work. Harry asked permis¬ 
sion to go down also, as he wanted to 
see for himself what it looked like. They 
gave him permission, as he was the 




THE MINE DISASTER 


163 


owner of the newspaper, and he went 
down with the men. 

He had never been in a mine before, 
so it was all new to him, but there was 
really not much to see. The wall of 
dirt and stones confronting them was 
the main point, and the men went right 
to work digging the dirt away and 
shoveling it into the passages leading 
off from the main portion of the mine. 
The stones they carried and threw there 
also. 

Having seen all there was to see, 
Harry went back up in the cage that 
brought down the next lot of men, and 
when asked what he thought about it by 
some of the waiting crowd, he shook 
his head. 

“I don’t know how long it will take 
to dig through the wall of debris,” he 
said, “but that’s all there is to do. I 
hope none of the miners have been 





164 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


caught under the debris and killed. It’ll 
be a sad as well as a bad affair, if that 
has taken place.” 

The people to whom he was talking 
nodded their heads, and Elsie Merwin, 
who, with her father, was there, nodded 
and said: “Yes, that will be a sad affair 
indeed, if any of the miners have been 
killed.” 

The people who had been drawn there 
by curiosity withdrew after an hour or 
so, and returned to their homes and 
places of business. Down in the mine, 
working with almost feverish energy, 
the good-hearted people of this little 
mining town — workers, miners and 
volunteers — were digging away the 
debris that had fallen into the mine 
from above and carrying the rocks and 
throwing them back by the walls and 
into the mouths of the passages leading 
off from the mine proper. 


THE MINE DISASTER 


165 


When evening came these excavators 
had made considerable headway, but 
when they shouted, to try to make the 
men on the other side of the wall of 
debris hear, there was no answer. They 
shook their heads, for this indicated 
either that the cave-in was serious in¬ 
deed and extended far back into the rear 
portion of the mine, or that the im¬ 
prisoned miners had been asphyxiated. 

Harry and Tommy had returned to 
the office after an hour or so spent at 
the mine. They worked steadily, as 
usual, and got most all the type thrown 
into the cases. Some local news items 
that Harry had secured they set up into 
type-form, a galley and a half in all, 
which was a fair beginning. 

“There’ll be as much ordinary news 
this week as there was last,” said Harry, 
“and now this mining disaster will be 
another interesting matter that will 






166 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


have to be written up and printed. That 
will make this second week’s issue of 
‘The Coalville News’ interesting. It 
will also be good for me, as it will help 
to show that a paper is worth while to 
have in the town, and will make its suc¬ 
cess all the more certain. I am sorry 
the cave-in took place, Tommy, but see¬ 
ing that it did, I am going to get as 
much benefit out of it as I can by writ¬ 
ing it up and printing it.” 

“Well, you are running the paper to 
print the news,” said Tommy, “and you 
aren’t to blame for the cave-in having 
taken place.” 

The work of excavating in the mine 
went on steadily throughout the night 
and continued all through the next day 
and night; and then, early Wednesday 
morning the excavators succeeded in 
making a hole through the wall of 
debris. Enlarging it to the diameter of 





THE MINE DISASTER 


167 


four or five feet, they entered the por¬ 
tion of the mine back of the wall and 
found the miners lying all around in an 
unconscious condition. They were not 
wholly asphyxiated, but were in a pretty 
serious condition, as a result of the 
heavy, gaseous air that they had been 
breathing during the past forty hours. 

They were gotten out as quickly as 
possible, and were brought back to 
consciousness. When they were all out 
it was seen that four of the men who 
had been working there were missing. 
They were undoubtedly crushed to 
death beneath the tons and tons of 
earth and stone that had not as yet been 
removed. When this was gotten away, 
underneath it as was expected, the four 
miners were found, dead. 

They were taken to the homes of 
their sorrowing families, and next day 




168 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


were buried in the cemetery northeast 
of the town. 

The mine was cleared of the debris 
and work resumed, and in the next 
issue of “The Coalville News” appeared 
a two-and-a-half column account of the 
mine disaster. It had been carefully 
written by Harry, and the people read it 
with interest. Harry had interviewed 
quite a number of miners, securing 
about all the information there was, and 
his article told the whole story in clear 
and explicit language. 

Again “The Coalville News” had 
scored, and had proven that it was a 
boon to the town to have a newspaper. 






CHAPTER X 

PLEASED AND ENCOURAGED 

Subscriptions to “The Coalville 
News” were coming in at a good rate. 
The first week seventy-three people had 
come up to the office and paid a dollar 
for a year s subscription and Harry had 
enrolled their names in his subscription 
ledger. This second week was turning 
out well also, from the same standpoint, 
and up to Friday evening he had re¬ 
ceived sixty-seven new subscriptions. 
On Saturday ten more people sub¬ 
scribed. This was a total of one hun¬ 
dred and fifty. 

That was very encouraging for only 
two weeks, Harry believed, but it was 
not enough yet for the purpose he had 
in view, viz., having “The Coalville 
News” entered in the post-office, so that 

169 


170 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


he could send it to the subscribers 
through the mails at second-class rates, 
which is one cent per pound. He wanted 
to secure three hundred subscribers 
before making application at the post- 
office for this privilege, and to this end 
he put an advertisement in the next 
week’s issue of the paper, telling the 
people that he wanted to secure three 
hundred subscribers as soon as possible, 
so he could send the paper to them 
through the mails; and that he hoped 
they would respond liberally. He stated 
that he had already received one hun¬ 
dred and fifty subscriptions, but that 
that was only half enough. He told 
them that he hoped to secure the other 
one hundred and fifty subscriptions 
within the next week or ten days. 

This advertisement, in reading notice 
or editorial form, had good results, and 
during the ensuing week Harry received 





PLEASED AND ENCOURAGED 171 

one hundred and fourteen subscriptions, 
which enabled him to print another 
reading notice complimenting the peo¬ 
ple for responding so liberally. 

“I only need thirty-six more sub¬ 
scriptions,” he wrote and printed in the 
next issue, “and then I will enter ‘The 
Coalville News’ in the post-office, get 
the benefit of second-class rates and 
send the paper to the subscribers 
through the mails. Thanks for sub¬ 
scribing so liberally, and I hope to re¬ 
ceive the thirty-six subscriptions this 
week, and don’t doubt that I will do so. 
Again, thanks.” 

The subscriptions came in to the 
number of forty-six the next week, and 
Harry now had three hundred and ten 
names of bona fide subscribers enrolled 
in his subscription ledger. He was well 
pleased, and going around to the post- 
office, had “The Coalville News” entered 


172 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


for transmission through the mails at 
second-class rates. When they had 
finished printing the paper the next Fri¬ 
day afternoon, instead of having 
Tommy and his three boy confreres dis¬ 
tribute the papers to the houses, he told 
them to take them to the post-office in¬ 
stead. He had written the names of the 
subscribers on the papers. 

“Go in at the back-door, Tommy,” he 
said. “They will show you where to put 
the papers.” 

“All right,” Tommy replied, and then 
he and the other three boys took the 
papers to the post-office. 

There was an editorial, or reading 
notice, in this issue, stating that the 
number of subscriptions Harry had de¬ 
sired had been received, and that the 
subscribers would receive the paper 
through the post-office, that issue and 
continually thereafter; and he thanked 



PLEASED AND ENCOURAGED 


173 


them sincerely for their patronage, add¬ 
ing that he would try to make “The 
Coalville News” always as interesting 
and newsy as was possible, so that they 
would be glad they subscribed. 

In addition to the subscriptions to the 
paper, Harry had quite a lot of job¬ 
printing to do, and when the first of 
August came he had a great many bills 
for advertising and job-printing to col¬ 
lect from the merchants of Coalville. 
The first issue of the paper had been 
printed June 14, but it was only a little 
over two weeks till July 1st, so Harry 
had decided to wait till August 1st be¬ 
fore beginning to collect from the mer¬ 
chants. He had been so busy the first 
two weeks that he did not have time to 
attend to that end of the publishing 
business, although it is most important. 
But the money that had come in from 
subscriptions the first two weeks made 



174 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


it unnecessary to collect for the adver¬ 
tising and job-printing the 1st of July, 
so he could wait till August 1st with 
safety. 

The paper’s advertising columns had 
been filled all the time during the six 
weeks with display advertising. Harry 
had also secured after the first issue, 
quite a lot of pay locals, which, scat¬ 
tered around among the local news 
items, were good advertising. Harry 
had printed some statements for his 
own use, in addition to printing jobs for 
the merchants. 

After all the bills were made out, both 
for the job-printing he had done for the 
merchants, and for advertising, Harry 
figured up the total which was quite 
pleasing to him. He found that he had 
had patronage from the business men of 
Coalville to the amounts as follows: 







PLEASED AND ENCOURAGED 


175 


Display advertising, six issues, 

June 14 to July 26, inclu- 

clusive .$ 78.80 

Pay locals, five issues, June 21 

to July 26, inclusive. 16.40 

Job printing, June 14 to July 

26, inclusive.. 52.20 


Total.$147.40 

These were the receipts for six weeks, 
instead of for only a month, and the 
earnings of the printing office, per week, 
had been not quite twenty-five dollars. 
This was nearly one hundred dollars 
per month, however, from these two 
sources, advertising and job printing, 
and Harry felt that his paper would pay 
quite well, even better than he had ex¬ 
pected. Of course he had received an 
additional three hundred and ten dol¬ 
lars from subscriptions which, added 










176 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


to the receipts from advertising and job¬ 
printing, amounted to $457.40. But 
from now on, there would be an interval 
of a year before his subscriptions would 
be renewed. During that period, there¬ 
fore, he would have to depend on adver¬ 
tising and job-printing as his source of 
income. 

Harry printed on the blank upper 
portion of his statements, the following: 

THE COALVILLE NEWS 

A Non-Political Home Newspaper. 

Job-Printing a Specialty. 

The bills having been made out, 
Harry went around to the business 
houses to make his collections. He had 
no trouble. The merchants paid the 
bills without hesitation, and at the end 
of about two hours Harry returned to 
the printing office with one hundred and 
forty-seven dollars and forty cents in 





PLEASED AND ENCOURAGED 


1 77 


his pocket. He had already opened a 
checking account in the Citizens’ Bank, 
with the money received on subscrip¬ 
tions, and he now filled in a deposit slip 
of the Citizens’ Bank—he had printed 
them a lot a few days before—to the 
amount of one hundred and forty-seven 
dollars, placed it and the money be¬ 
tween the leaves of his bank-book and 
went back downstairs and to the bank 
to deposit the amount. It was entered 
in the bank-book by the cashier, after 
which Harry returned to the printing- 
office feeling quite well pleased. 

“I’ve done pretty well so far, 
Tommy,” he said. “I guess ‘The Coal¬ 
ville News’ is going to be a success.” 

“I’m glad of that,” said Tommy. 

Harry had taken time, the first of 
July, to send a draft to both the busi¬ 
ness houses in Denver that furnished 
him his paper, for the newspaper and 




178 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


for job-printing purposes. He had also 
taken up the first one of the thirteen- 
dollar mortgage notes, one of which he 
was to pay the first of each month, 
with six per cent interest added, until 
the entire twelve were paid. 

Now, however, as a result of having 
received the $310 on subscriptions, and 
as a result of having just collected 
$147.40 for advertising and job-printing, 
Harry decided to pay off the other 
eleven mortgage-notes at once. It 
would be off his mind and would save 
him several dollars in interest that he 
would have to pay if he paid the notes 
only one at a time, once per month. 
Money saved is money earned, and 
while this saving in interest would not 
be very much, it would be something. 

The type foundry firm had sent the 
twelve mortgage-notes to the Citizens’ 
Bank for collection en seriatum, and 





“THE COALVILLE NEWS IS GOING TO BE A SUCCESS 

























































































180 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry had paid the first one there and 
knew the other eleven were on file, so 
he went to the bank and told the 
cashier to figure up how much interest 
would be due on the other eleven mort¬ 
gage-notes, figuring the interest to Sep¬ 
tember 1st. The man did so and told 
Harry how much interest it would be. 
Then Harry told him to add it to the 
one hundred and forty-three dollars 
that the notes totaled, and he would 
take them all up at once. 

The cashier did as Harry said, and 
then Harry made out a check for the 
amount, and the cashier handed him the 
eleven mortgage-notes, after having 
stamped the word, “Paid,” on each with 
a rubber-stamp. He bought a draft to 
the amount that he owed each of the 
paper houses for the month of July, 
then returned to the office and placed 
the mortgage-notes in the drawer of his 


PLEASED AND ENCOURAGED 


181 


desk. Then he wrote letters to the paper 
house firms and enclosed the drafts, and 
also wrote a letter to the type foundry 
firm, telling them that he had succeeded 
better than he had expected, that he had 
taken up the other eleven notes at the 
bank, and thanked them for their kind¬ 
ness in having sold him his printing out¬ 
fit on such reasonable terms. 

On second thought, he went back to 
the bank and bought a draft for twenty 
dollars, which was the cost of a second¬ 
hand paper cutter he had seen at the 
type foundry when purchasing his out¬ 
fit; and enclosed the draft in the letter 
with instructions to send him the paper 
cutter. Then he went down and mailed 
the letter. He had already mailed the 
letters to the paper houses when he 
went to the bank the second time. 

After six weeks of paper-publishing 
and job-printing experience Harry now 




182 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


found himself in good condition finan¬ 
cially and his paper and printing busi¬ 
ness practically an assured success. 
Quite naturally he felt pleased and en¬ 
couraged. 



Chapter XI 


FIRE 

One might suppose that in a small 
town of the size of Coalville, viz., four¬ 
teen hundred inhabitants, there would 
not be much of interest to print in the 
paper. But such is not the case. There 
is always news of interest to the resi¬ 
dents of the town and vicinity. In a 
small place they all know one another, 
their goings and comings, and the do¬ 
ings of one another are of interest to 
the rest; hence when the newspaper 
appears it is seized and opened up with 
eager haste and its contents read with 
avidity. This is why Harry Weston’s 
paper, “The Coalville News,” had made 
such a success during the six weeks of 
its existence as to secure three hundred 
and ten subscribers and bring into his 

183 


184 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


money-till three hundred and ten dol¬ 
lars. 

There is always some news to print, 
in fact quite enough to make a news¬ 
paper in a town of the size of Coalville 
—and indeed in towns somewhat 
smaller—a welcome enterprise among 
the other business enterprises of the 
place. For instance, there are as the 
staple news items, the activities of the 
resident citizens; and there is never a 
day that some of them are not going 
somewhere, or someone coming to see 
and visit them, either relatives or 
friends, or both. Then there are items 
regarding new buildings and improve¬ 
ments, items regarding street and side¬ 
walk repairs, the church and Sunday 
school, the social societies items, with 
their intermittent elections of officials. 
There are items about the sick and acci¬ 
dentally-injured people. There are the 


FIRE 


185 


mass meetings and conventions items, 
and the secret societies items, and then 
there are the elections of the mayor and 
other city officials, and the election of 
three new school trustees each year. 
Also there are the death and funeral 
items, and on the other hand there are 
the birth items. The doings of the city 
officials, who meet usually once per 
week, furnish news items of interest, as 
their deliberations are related to city 
improvements, etc., such as the voting 
of bonds for the purpose of making the 
improvements. In fact, there is practi¬ 
cally no end to the items of interest to 
the people of any town, that can either 
be gathered by a diligent editor doing 
his own reportorial work, or handed to 
him by friendly citizens, to be printed in 
his paper. To print and publish a coun¬ 
try newspaper, as those published in 





186 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


small towns are called, is a business 
creditable and indeed worthwhile. 

Harry Weston believed this, and was 
glad he had decided to become a coun¬ 
try newspaper publisher. 

It happened that in addition to the 
general run of news that he had been 
printing during the past four weeks, 
another item of news out of the ordi¬ 
nary had been preparing during the 
past month. Coalville was at the foot 
of the Raton spur of the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. All around to the south, west 
and north, in a half-circle, was quite a: 
goodly growth of timber, extending up 
the mountain halfway to the summit. 
Day by day under the hot, burning rays 
of the summer sun the leaves had been 
falling from the trees, and lying two or 
three inches thick in their crisp, dry con¬ 
dition. The grass, too, was changed 
from the green hue of the month of 




FIRE 


187 


June to the brown hue of July, during 
which period the burning heat from the 
full-fledged summer sun had dried out 
all the native juices in the grass and left 
it parched. 

About the middle of the afternoon of 
Monday, July the 29th, just as Harry 
and Tommy were congratulating them¬ 
selves on their easy prospects for get¬ 
ting out the next issue of the paper, a 
boy came running into Coalville, with 
the information that there was a fire 
raging in the timber about a mile north 
of the big mine, which itself was half a 
mile to the northward. The remoteness 
of the fire explained why it had not 
been discovered, without doubt. The 
smoke from the fire, rising even above 
the treetops at the point where it was 
burning, was not as yet discernible, as 
the dark background of the timber 
farther up the mountain made it almost 




188 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


invisible; but after the boy’s explana¬ 
tion that a fire was raging up on the 
mountain-side, it was seen on looking 
closely that there was smoke to be seen. 

“Fire!” the people exclaimed. “The 
timber is on fire! That will be serious 
to the people residing up there, unless 
the fire is extinguished before it gets 
down to the homes of the miners over 
on the north side of the mine!” 

This was true. All around, in the 
edge of the timber north of the big 
mine, were the homes of quite a good 
many of the men who worked in that 
mine. A few even of the men working 
in the Annex Mine resided up in the 
edge of the timber beyond the mine, but 
most of these resided in Coalville 
proper, as the Annex Mine was nearer 
town than the big mine. 

Harry was down on the street soon 
after the boy had reached the town with 





FIRE 


189 


the news of the fire, and he hastened to 
interview him. 

“How serious a fire is it, my boy?” 
Harry asked of the almost breathless 
urchin. “Is it likely to get down to the 
miners’ homes and burn their houses? 
Surely it isn’t that dangerous.” 

“Yes it is!” was the reply. “It’s 
burning mighty fast and is coming 
right down toward the houses! The old 
dead leaves and grass burn like every¬ 
thing, and even old dead limbs and old 
dead trees are burning!” 

“Any of the trees will burn after the 
fire gets under good headway,” said one 
of the men who had gathered to hear 
what the boy said. “I’ve seen more than 
one forest fire, and know how they 
work. They increase in volume and in¬ 
tensity rapidly and if not stopped in 
time they will get beyond control and 
carry everything before them. This one 



190 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


had better be looked after right away. 
Any delay might result in the homes of 
the miners up in the edge of the timber 
being burned to the ground.” 

“That being true, everybody that can 
do so ought to hasten up there and help 
put the fire out,” said Harry. “I’m 
going. I’ll want the news of the fire 
for the paper, anyway, and I can secure 
the news and help extinguish the fire at 
the same time. How do you fight a 
timber fire?” 

“With wet cloths. We’ll have to take 
pails along. Any old clothing, or pieces 
of old carpet will do for cloths.” 

“I see,” said Harry. “And couldn’t 
the fire department brigade do some¬ 
thing, even though it’s a timber fire a 
mile or more away?” 

“If they could get water, they could, 
as they could play the water up into the 
trees with the hose, as well as on the 




FIRE 


191 


dead leaves and grass on the ground.” 

“Yes, we’re going up there with the 
hose-reel,” said a man who was hurry¬ 
ing along, though he stopped long 
enough to make this statement and to 
add: “I’m a fireman. We can get the 
water. We’ll haul it up in a wagon, in 
barrels.” 

“That’s a good idea,” said the other 
man. “I’ll go and get one of my old 
coats and a two-gallon pail, and will be 
up where the fire is in a jiffy.” 

The fireman nodded and hurried on 
toward the building in which they kept 
the hose-reel, and the other man 
hastened away in the direction of his 
home. Leaving the boy who had 
brought the news of the fire talking to 
two or three other boys who had ap¬ 
peared, Harry made his way quickly up 
into the printing office. 

“There’s a big fire raging up in the 




192 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


timber a mile or so north of the big 
mine, Tommy,” he said. “Let’s go up 
and see what we can do to help stop it.” 

“All right,” was the reply. “I hear 
the people calling out to each other.” 
As was logical, even though he knew of 
the fire and had heard the people spread¬ 
ing the news about it, Tommy had re¬ 
mained in the office and stuck to his 
work until Harry came. 

Harry locked the printing office and 
he and Tommy hastened away, though 
Harry stopped a few moments at the 
Tompkins home, and got a piece of old 
carpet from Mrs. Tompkins, with which 
to fight the fire. 

When Harry reached the scene of the 
fire he found perhaps a hundred or more 
of Coalville’s citizens there, including 
the firemen with their hose-reel. They 
were panting as a result of pulling the 
reel up the mountain, but as soon as the 



FIRE 


193 


wagon came in which there were four 
barrels filled with water, they began 
work. 

And work there was in plenty! The 
fire was blazing fiercely; and it could be 
seen that it was going to be a difficult 
matter to put it out. It had to be done 
however, if the miners’ homes were to 
be saved, and all who were there, in¬ 
cluding Harry and Tommy, went to 
work fighting the flames. 

Quite a good deal of good was done 
by the people using cloths that had 
been dipped in water which was brought 
in pails from a spring that was near at 
hand. But the most effective work of 
extinguishing the fire was done by the 
firemen, who, as soon as the water 
wagon arrived, energetically set to 
work. 

The barrels were taken out of the 
wagon and placed on the ground, after 




194 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


which a force-pump that had been 
brought along in the wagon was 
brought into requisition, and by its use 
sufficient pressure was developed so 
that quite a strong stream of water 
could be thrown by the hose. This was 
most effective, and by hauling water in 
several wagons, and moving the wagon 
with the force-pump in it along in the 
timber, from place to place, the hundred 
or so people with the damp cloths also 
working energetically, the flames were 
subdued and the fire extinguished be¬ 
fore dark. The fire-fighters, all grimy 
with smoke and perspiration, returned 
to their homes in Coalville, where, after 
they had washed off the grime, sat down 
to supper with the added relish that 
their hard work gave them. 

The miners’ homes were saved, and if 
the fire had not been extinguished be¬ 
fore it grew to ungovernable propor- 






FIRE 


195 


tions, it would certainly have burned 
their houses down. 

Harry wrote up the fire, then he and 
Tommy set the article up in type-form. 
On Friday when “The Coalville News” 
reached the homes of the people of the 
town, they read with interest the de¬ 
scription of the fire and the explanation 
of how it was overcome and extin¬ 
guished. There was the usual amount 
of ordinary news also, and the sub¬ 
scribers were very well pleased with the 
paper. 

In addition to Harry’s write-up of the 
fire, there was a “Card of Thanks” that 
had been brought in by a committee of 
three of the miners who resided in the 
edge of the timber, and whose homes, 
and those of all the other miners resid¬ 
ing there, had been saved from burning. 
The miners and their families all joined 
in thanking the people of Coalville for 





196 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


having put out the fire and thus saved 
their homes. Especial mention was 
made of the firemen whose able work 
with the hose and force-pump was 
mainly responsible for the extinguish¬ 
ing of the fire. The people with the 
damp cloths did very good work, how¬ 
ever, and received their proper share of 
the miners’ gratitude. 




Chapter XII 
AT THE END OF A YEAR 

After this incident of the timber fire, 
nothing out of the ordinary took place 
for quite a while. Week after week 
went by, with only about the usual 
amount of news in the paper. The ad¬ 
vertising continued in about the same 
volume, the advertising columns being 
filled each week. There was consider¬ 
able job printing to do also, and Harry 
was quite well pleased. He and Tommy 
were kept pretty busy, but they were 
both workers and did not mind hustling. 

There was quite a good deal of print¬ 
ing, the paper for which had to be cut 
from large sheets of paper—small jobs, 
such as receipts, notes, checks and de¬ 
posit slips for the bank, etc. Harry 
found that his recently purchased paper- 
cutter was a big help to him. The type 

197 


198 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


foundry people had sent it promptly on 
receiving his letter with the twenty- 
dollar draft enclosed. They had thanked 
him, also, for paying the other eleven 
mortgage-notes and taking them up, 
and congratulated him on having suc¬ 
ceeded better in the newspaper publish¬ 
ing business than he had expected. 

“That is something that seldom takes 
place,” they wrote, “and the fact that 
you have succeeded even better than 
you had anticipated, is complimentary 
and a credit to yourself. It demon¬ 
strates that you have good business 
qualifications and verifies our belief that 
such was the case when we sold you 
your printing outfit. Whenever you 
need any printers’ supplies, all you have 
to do is to let us know what they are 
and we will be pleased to send them to 
you at once.” 

Harry sang in the Sunday school 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


199 


choir regularly, which was a pleasure 
to him. He enjoyed the lessons each 
Sunday, as Mr. Worling, who was quite 
an enthusiastic teacher, made them in¬ 
teresting to the members of his class. 
There was to be a church social and 
supper at the church on Wednesday 
evening of the first week in October, 
and Mr. Welborne, the superintendent 
of the Sunday school, asked Elsie if she 
and Harry Weston would sing a duet, 
as they were going to have a musical 
program in addition to the supper. She 
told him they would if Harry were 
willing. She told her father who was 
at work in his carpenter shop. 

“That will be nice,” he replied. “You 
and Harry sing splendidly, and the peo¬ 
ple will be glad to hear you.” 

“Yes, I hope so, and, father, I believe 
I’ll go up to the printing office and see 
Harry about it at once.” 





200 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“Yes, go along,” was the reply. “He’ll 
be glad to sing.” 

“I think he will. He’s a little diffident, 
but he sings in the choir and it won’t 
be much more difficult to sing a duet. 
We’ll sing one of the songs we’ve sung 
at home, so it will be easy for him.” 

She left the shop and went upstairs 
into the printing office. Harry was dis¬ 
tributing type, but when Elsie entered 
he placed the handful of type back in 
the form. 

“How do you do, Elsie,” he said with 
a smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure 
of this call?” 

“I’ve come to ask a favor, Harry,” she 
said. “Now, please don’t refuse!” 

“I don’t think I will refuse,” he said. 
“But, what is the favor?” 

“I want you to sing a duet with me 
at the social in the church Wednesday 
evening. Will you? Mr. Welborne, the 


AT THE END OF A YEAR 


201 


superintendent of our Sunday school, 
asked me if we would. He’s looking 
after the music program.” 

“Certainly I’ll sing with you, Elsie,” 
said Harry. “I’ll be glad to.” 

“Thanks. I knew you would. Come 
to our home early Wednesday evening, 
and we’ll practice the song once, then 
we can go to the church together.” 

“Very well. I’ll be there.” 

“Thanks, and good-bye till we see 
each other again.” 

He told her good-bye and she went 
back to the carpenter shop, where she 
told her father that Harry had said he 
would sing with her. 

Her father nodded. “I knew he 
would,” he said. 

Then she went home and told her 
mother that she and Harry Weston 
were to sing a duet at the church social 
Wednesday evening. 




202 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“That’ll be nice,” her mother said. 

When Wednesday evening came, 
Harry was on hand at Elsie’s home. 

Elsie and Harry sang the song 
through and when they had finished she 
asked her parents: 

“How did that sound?” 

“Splendid!” her mother replied. 

“Quite good indeed,” her father said. 
“I don’t think you need fear but that 
the audience will appreciate your sing¬ 
ing.” 

“That’s what we want it to do,” Elsie 
said with a smile. 

They all four went to the church 
together, and found it quite well-filled. 
Harry had been in Coalville long 
enough now to be well acquainted, es¬ 
pecially with the people of this church, 
as he sang in the choir every Sunday 
and conversed with different people, all 
of whom had a pleasant word for him. 





AT THE END OF A YEAR 


203 


•In truth they were not only friendly to 
the young newspaper publisher, but ad¬ 
mired him as well, both on account of 
his business abilities and because of the 
fact that he was a nice young man with 
sterling qualities. 

There were several musical numbers 
on the program; and when it came time 
for Elsie and Harry to sing, they sang 
so well that in spite of the fact that they 
sang in the church the applause was 
quite generous. 

When the music program was 
finished, supper was served and Harry 
and Elsie sat together at the improvised 
table, which consisted of some wide 
boards laid on some small trestles bor¬ 
rowed from Mr. Merwin’s carpenter 
shop. 

The social was indeed a success, and 
all went home feeling well pleased, as 
was right and proper, for that is what 




204 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


church socials are for. Harry and Elsie 
especially, were happy, and Elsie evi¬ 
denced this when she said to Harry, as 
they were walking home: 

“I didn’t know we could sing so well, 
Harry! Aren’t you glad we sang?” 

“Certainly,” said Harry. “Yes, I am 
glad to have helped make the social a 
pleasing affair, and of course you are 
glad to have done so, too.” 

“Quite surely that is the case,” Elsie 
replied. “Well, they’ll be wanting us to 
sing every little while through the fall 
and winter. That is when they have 
most of their social events, and as we 
have sung once they will want us to do 
so again. We wouldn’t want to sing 
any one song till it became so well 
known to the hearers as to sound old. 
You can come over evenings, Harry, 
and we will pick out some songs. I have 
a stack of music a foot and a half high 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


205 


and we can find some good ones in it, I 
am sure.” 

“Very well. I will drop around once 
or twice a week, Elsie. I don’t doubt 
but that you will find some good songs 
among so many. As you say, it will be 
well to know quite a few songs if we 
are to sing very often. I shall always 
be ready to sing with you whenever 
they want us to sing.” 

“Good!” said Elsie. “That will be 
splendid.” 

The next issue of “The Coalville 
News” contained a write-up of the social 
at the church, and the account that 
Harry had written and printed was read 
with interest by the subscribers. Each 
number of the music program was 
mentioned, with the name or names of 
the person or persons who rendered the 
numbers, his and Elsie’s names among 
the others. 




206 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry went around to the Merwin 
home two or three evenings of each of 
the two ensuing weeks, and they picked 
out half a dozen good songs and began 
practicing. 

“We’ll be able to sing at the socials 
when we get these songs learned,” said 
Elsie the evening they completed the 
work of searching out the songs, “and 
we will be singing something new 
nearly every time; then they won’t get 
tired of hearing us.” 

They did sing at all the socials held in 
the church and the homes of friends of 
the Merwins. They were the most popu¬ 
lar musical entertainers in Coalville, 
though Charley Martin, who sang bass 
in the choir, and Annie Carlton, who 
also sang in the choir and was one of 
Elsie’s friends, ran them a close race. 

The winter passed away, spring ap¬ 
peared and “The Coalville News” was 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


207 


getting along well. By this time it had 
been published long enough so that its 
readers regarded it as a part of their 
home life, and would not have been 
without it for anything. It was looked 
upon as a fixture, and was indeed con¬ 
sidered one of the established business 
enterprises of the town. 

Indeed it had done so well that a man 
who happened to visit Coalville one day, 
and who had at one time been in the 
newspaper publishing business, came up 
to the printing office and after looking 
around a little and talking with Harry, 
offered to buy the business. 

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars for 
it, young man,” he said. “Your press 
is only a hand-press, and your job-press 
and most of your type are second-hand, 
but I used to be in the paper publishing 
business and recently a desire to get 
back into it again has taken hold of me. 


208 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


If you want to accept my offer, which I 
consider pretty liberal, even though 
your business is paying quite well, I am 
informed by some of the business men 
that all you have to do is to say so and 
the thousand dollars is yours,” and he 
drew a check-book from his pocket and 
held it up so Harry could see it. “I 
have three thousand dollars on deposit 
in the bank in Denver,” he continued, 
“but if you don’t want to accept the 
check I will get the money for you right 
down in your bank here in Coalville, as 
the cashier knows me and I can get him 
to let me have the money. What do you 
say?” 

Harry looked at the man a few mo¬ 
ments and then shook his head. 

“No,” he said, “I won’t sell the paper. 
I wouldn’t sell it for twice a thousand 
dollars, though one thousand is as you 
have said, as much as it is worth, from 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


209 


a financial standpoint. But it is worth 
much more than that to me, for the 
reason that Coalville is my home. If I 
sold my paper I would have to go away 
from here and start anew somewhere 
else, which is something I wouldn’t like 
to do. No, I won’t sell, sir, thank you 
for your offer just the same.” 

The man nodded and put the check¬ 
book back in his pocket. 

“All right,” he said. “You know your 
own affairs of course, and I don’t blame 
you for not wanting to sell, now that 
you have become established here, have 
made friends and look upon the place as 
your home. However, if you ever do 
want to sell, just drop a line to that 
name and address, and I’ll come and 
buy you out, unless I have gone into 
something else,” and he handed Harry a 
Card with his name and address on it, 
after which he took his departure. 




210 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


“I’m glad you didn’t sell the paper, 
Harry,” said Tommy. 

Harry nodded. “I told him the 
truth, Tommy, when I said I wouldn’t 
sell the paper for twice a thousand dol¬ 
lars. I like the newspaper business. It 
has variety and interest and the work 
isn’t too hard; and as I told him, Coal¬ 
ville is my home, the only home I have 
in fact; and I would be hurting my own 
feelings too seriously if I sold the 
paper.” 

“That’s a good way to look at it,” 
agreed Tommy. 

Somebody else told him the same 
thing that evening. It was Elsie, who 
was at the door of her father’s carpen¬ 
ter-shop when Harry came along on his 
way to his boarding-place. She had 
heard that a man had offered Harry a 
thousand dollars for his paper, and the 
first words she said to him were: 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


211 


“I’m glad you didn’t sell your paper, 
Harry! Father told me a man wanted 
to buy it.” 

“No, I didn’t sell the paper, Elsie, and 
wouldn’t do so, not even for three times 
the price he offered me, for I don’t want 
to leave Coalville. It’s my home, and 
home’s the dearest place on earth.” 

“So it is,” was the reply, “and I’m 
glad that you don’t want to leave Coal¬ 
ville and that you look upon it as your 
home.” 

“Thanks,” Harry said. 

Then she went back into the shop and 
Harry continued on to his boarding¬ 
house. 

Mr. Tompkins had heard that some¬ 
one had tried to buy Harry’s printing 
business and newspaper, and when 
Harry came in, he said: 

“I understand you had an offer for 
your paper this afternoon, but that you 






212 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


refused to sell. I’m glad you refused,” 
he continued, as Harry nodded. “I 
don’t think a new man would be able 
to get out a better paper than you do, 
and we like you, we people of Coalville, 
and consider you one of us and would 
hate to lose you.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Tompkins,” said 
Harry. “I look upon Coalville as my 
home and intend to remain here.” 

“It’s a pretty good town,” was the re¬ 
ply, and he resumed reading his daily 
newspaper that came from Denver each 
evening, and Harry went on up to his 
room. 

March passed away, and then April, 
and May, and then June came. And 
with the second week’s issue in that 
month Harry’s paper, “The Coalville 
News,” was one year old. Harry was 
eighteen years old when he started the 
paper and he was now nineteen years of 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


213 


age. The paper was doing well, the 
merchants were advertising quite liber¬ 
ally, there was a steady run of job-print¬ 
ing, and Harry was quite satisfied. 

Although it was a coal-mining town, 
Coalville was a pretty place and Harry 
felt that he would be satisfied to reside 
there, so after deliberating awhile, he 
went to the officials of “The Coalville 
Building & Loan Association” and told 
them he wanted a house built on the 
building-and-loan plan. The salient 
feature of this plan is that the patron 
is permitted to pay for a house on the 
installment plan, so much per month, 
“just like rent,” as the advertisements 
say. In due time, after a certain num¬ 
ber of months has elapsed, it is found 
that he has “paid out,” and the house 
is his. 

“The money I pay to you each month 
will be just that much saved,” said 




214 


THE YOUNG PUBLISHER 


Harry, “and then if ever I do want a 
house to move into, I’ll have it.” 

The official nodded and said he was 
wise, and that it was a very good way 
to save money. “And besides, you’ll 
need the house in due time,” said one of 
them with a smile, who knew Harry 
quite well. “With you such a good-look¬ 
ing, bright and business-like young 
man, it could hardly be otherwise than 
that some nice girl will bless you for the 
foresight that caused you to have a 
house already built and ready for occu¬ 
pancy.” 

Harry smiled and blushed a little, but 
took the jovial remark of the man in 
good part, then filling in and handing 
him a check for the initial payment, he 
took his departure. 

“A bright young fellow, Weston,” 
said one of the other members of the 
Building and Loan Association. 




AT THE END OF A YEAR 


215 


“Indeed he is!” said the one who had 
teased Harry, “and just full of business 
and good, hard common sense besides.” 

And now, with a year’s experience in 
the printing and publishing business 
behind him and the future all before 
him, Harry Weston started in on the 
second year of his publishing venture. 
He had not failed, but had succeeded 
instead, because of his industry, in¬ 
tegrity, fair-mindedness, courtesy and 
various other good qualities. That is 
why, also, that he was, at the end of 
the first year and the beginning of the 
second—still in business. 


THE END 











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